Find and Ye Shall Seek

Why is it worth it to be in a larger denomination

2011-02-13T22:59:00.001-08:00

A front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of two Lutheran churches that were kicked out of the ELCA several years ago because of decisions to ordain gay pastors. Now the ECLA has changed its tune, is allowing gay pastors, and is asking these free thinking congregations to rejoin them. One of the two churches has decided to return to the ELCA fold. But the other one is not so sure. The pastor, Susan Strouse, explains one reason why:

There's also the question of what the next Great Debate will be, Strouse said. What progressive position will First United take, and will it bring expulsion?

If a congregation has gone its own way for over a decade, having explored progressive values without having to subject itself to the authoritarian control of a denominational theology police, why should they now put their own independence once again at risk by rejoining the denomination? The church in question has seen itself as a place where people who have felt excluded from organized religion could find a home. Would re-joining the ELCA be consistent with that mission?

The Bible without certainty

2011-02-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

I ran across a review of a boot titled The Rise and Fall of the Bible that might be worth checking out. The author of the book points out that lots of Americans buy the Bible without actually bothering to read it. In so doing, they confer the status of holy icon to the Bible, something to be revered rather than actually read. Of course, if many of those Americans were to actually read the Bible that they revere so much, the actual details of what the Bible is really like would contradict the image that they have of it as an infallible instruction book. In the midst of its sublime beauty and moral passion one would also encounter its flaws, its contradictions, and its moral failings. For a lot of people, it is better to remain blissfully ignorant.

I am not familiar with the author of the book, Timothy Beale, but he is a Christian who

would rather see his co-religionists embrace the fact that the Bible is full of contradictions and inconsistencies and come to regard it not as 'the book of answers, but as a library of questions,' many of which can never be conclusively resolved.

He also makes the point that the Bible is "poetry, not pool rules."

This is, of course, a point I have tried to make many times myself in this blog. I might have to take a look at this book.

2011-02-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book suggests that humans may construct the concept of God out of an innate human tendency to ascribe intentionality or consciousness to whatever we interact with in the world, even when there is clearly no consciousness behind it.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily a novel idea. It is hardly news that religions have often anthropomorphized nature or otherwise assigned divinity to it (remember the Egyptian sun god Ra?) There has been a lot of speculation about a "God gene", and of course the existence of such a gene (or some inborn tendency for humans to believe in a deity) is itself no proof that God doesn't exist; after all, the existence of our inborn ability to conceive of space and time does not mean that those are merely mental constructs, or the fact that our brains are wired to conceive of light doesn't mean that photons don't exist. Nevertheless, it is an interesting thought to ponder--that humans are inclined to believe in some kind of greater spiritual reality.

There is also a flip side to this, though. Just as the atheist might dismiss belief in God as merely the human tendency to assign consciousness to that which is unconscious, I can imagine the Tillichian theologian offering the same criticism, but from the opposite angle. If we think (a la Tillich) that God is not a being, but rather being itself, then giving God the traits of human--like consciousness and a human-style personality might be seen as a huge theological mistake, as a kind of idolatry. This is not because God doesn't exist, but because one is conceiving of God in a limited sense as a being rather than as the ground and depth of being itself.

"Religious genes"

2011-01-31T19:54:00.000-08:00

I ran across an article that an attempt to formulate a scientific model around the evolution of "religious genes".

The article seems to take for granted the existence of these alleged genes--and perhaps such genes do exist, but I am not certain that anyone knows this for sure. In any case, what amused me about this article was this statement:

Even if some of the people who are born to religious parents defect from religion and become secular, the religious genes they carry (which encompass other personality traits, such as obedience and conservativism) will still spread throughout society, according to the model’s numerical simulations.

The article almost had me until I got to that statement. If the author of this model, Robert Rowthorn, thinks that religious people necessarily have the personality traits of obedience and conservatism, then all I can say is that he needs to get out more.

Women Have Overtaken Christianity

2011-01-09T14:11:00.000-08:00

I ran across another Danish language article from the Danish national radio network that discusses an interesting phenomenon in Christianity, or at least one taking place in Denmark.

The article, with the title "Women Have Taken Over Christianity", notes that

In a few years, 2 out of 3 priests in Denmark will be women. Women already fill much of the religious life, in some contexts there are only 20% of men left...

Sixty percent of churchgoers in the Western world are women, while women make up 80% when one considers the more spiritual situations like stays at retreats and pilgrimages. This is true for example in the case of pilgrimage priest Elisabeth Lidell's events, where participants in her latest retreat consisted of ten women and a single man.

What is interesting about this is not just the suggestion that women have become more prominent, but rather the implication that somehow there is a softer female spirituality that contrasts with the strong virtues of masculinity, and that this somehow drives men away from church:

Female dominance is changing both the the contents in church and the role it plays in the community. But at the same time men risk becoming homeless in their belief.

"All the old triumphal psalms have gone out of style. Instead we sing saccharine songs where we ask Jesus to "take my little hand in yours." . This is just not something for men," according to the Christian blogger Peter Beliath. He is tired of the way that love, concern, and other feminine virtues fill the churches. He thus wants that there was something more for men to come for.

"Men like something that is solemn and ceremonial. But rituals and the almighty God fill less and less in the churches today," he claims.

That strikes me as sort of an odd complaint. I had this quaint idea that love and compassion were human virtues, not just feminine ones, and that those were virtues that a certain man named Jesus promoted in his own preachings. I also can't help but think that triumphalism is an expression of a kind of tribalism that perhaps we could do with a little less of.

So what conclusions are we to draw from this? Why are women more drawn to churches than men? Do men and women have different spiritual needs?

Conceptions of the Bible

2011-01-03T11:16:00.000-08:00

Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, a UCC pastor and author of the book Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, has written an article for the Huffington Post that suggests that it is pointless to argue about what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, one way or the other. I have felt this way for a long time myself, and not just about what the Bible says on homosexuality, but about any attempt at drawing an authoritative answer from the Bible as if it were a Holy Answer Book. I think that such efforts really miss the point of what the Bible is or should be about.

For one thing, she points out (correctly) that the Bible was written in a particular time and place in history and correspondingly reflects an often mistaken pre-scientific cosmological worldview:

The most important reason, however, that gays and lesbians should never, ever argue about scripture is because the Bible has nothing much to say about homosexuality. We have to remember that this is an ancient book. It was written at a time when people believed the world was flat and that the earth was in the middle of a three-tiered world with heaven above and hell below. It was written at a time when people believed that the whole of human reproduction was held in the sperm of a man and a woman was merely an incubator. Speaking of women, this was a time when they were seen as chattel -- property to be passed along from father to husband, from husband to brother and so on. It was written at a time when slavery was seen as God-ordained and animal sacrifice was the way to cleanse sins.

In short, we cannot extract modern ideas from an ancient book. The writers of the Bible no more understood homosexuality than they understood that a spherical Earth orbited the sun. At most, we have a commentary on same-sex sexual behavior involving lust and abuse, but nothing -- pro or con -- about the modern concept of sexual orientation. We don't take the Bible's word for it that the earth is flat and women only incubate babies and contribute nothing else to the process. Why on earth would we take it as an authority on sexual orientation?

What I particularly like about what she wrote is how she views the Bible:

The Bible remains a holy book because it maps humanity's journey with God, and not the other way around. Because it maps our journey with God, it maps our evolving understanding of how the Holy works in this world. Humanity has moved from seeing God as a harsh judge and lawmaker to a seeing God as full of grace, mercy and love.

We don't learn about God by pulling out tiny details of the book and proclaiming them as true for all time. Instead, the Bible puts us in touch with God when we recognize its overarching message, which can be summarized by 1 John 4:7-8: "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."

If the Bible charts a particular cultural and theological stream of human attempts at understanding God, then sometimes in the details it is going to be just plain wrong . But the value is to be found in the questions and the journeys that the Bible documents, not the answers that it allegedly provides.

Faith and Doubt

2011-01-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

James McGrath points out that "it is important to recognize that honest uncertainty is better for you, for one's faith tradition and for the world than unassailable conviction in spite of evidence to the contrary." This is part of an excellent summary he has written of the issues surrounding faith and doubt.

The Invention of Religion

2011-01-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

Sadly, today's Non Sequitor comic strip says something that is all too often true about religion, although that need not be the case:

God is naughtier than sex

2010-12-26T21:09:00.000-08:00

As a followup to my recent post about how Americans feel a need to exaggerate their religiousness while Europeans are ashamed of their religiousness, I ran across this article from the Danish national broadcast network's website. The original article is in Danish, although you can run it through Google Translate to get an English translation, albeit with some awkward constructions here and there. The title of the article is "God is naughtier than sex", and it describes a Danish man who wrote a children's Bible. Here a cleaned up text of the Google Translate version of the article:

"If I had said something about my marriage or my sex life to the reporter from a newspaper, then it would almost be less taboo than my disclosure that I believed in God." Such is what Sigurd Barrett experienced, when once during an interview he answered "yes" that he believed in God. The day after he could read in a double spread in the newspaper : "Sigurd believes in God!"

Sigurd Barrett finds that Danes are reluctant, almost afraid of the Christian faith, even though 80.9 percent of us are still members of the Church. This is partly why he agreed to make a children's bible. Not because he wants to proselytize or moralize, but because he wants it to be possible to talk about God without people responding nonsensically.

Not least, the kids need to be able to talk about God. Sigurd Barrett believes that it is our duty to speak with them about what faith is. And they should not be scared about wanting to talk with and about God:

"If we as parents put a lid on this impulse of fear to indoctrinate or brainwash our children, I mean really, we deprive them of the opportunity to found a spiritual dimension to their understanding of themselves. Praying a prayer is not an extreme or fanatical action. It is a natural desire to communicate with a higher power," he says.

I think that this once again illustrates the point that just as there is a kind of cultural stigma in the US against not being religious, there is an opposite stigma against being religious in many parts of Europe. By calling attention to this, I am not implying anything about whether being religious is good or bad--but I do think the cultural difference is interesting, and it says less about whether the people in a country as a whole are actually more or less religious than it does about how people in a given country want to present themselves. This also once again raises the question--why do Americans frequently want to make themselves out to be more religious than they are, and why Europeans frequently want to make themselves out to be less religious than they are?

Prayer for victory in war

2010-12-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

I ran across this article in the LA Times about a prayer that General Patton asked his chaplain to come up with. The prayer asked God to help give Patton favorable weather during the waning months of World War II, just prior to the Battle of the Bulge. The prayer that the chaplain came up with was this:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.

The article points out,

Throughout history, soldiers have called upon their gods for protection and victory over their enemies. But Patton's now legendary prayer was extraordinary in its presumption and audacity, said Hymel. "There were four other American commanders in the European Theater during that time, and none of them were asking God to fix the weather."

I am reminded of Mark Twain's famous "War Prayer" story, a brilliant anti-war spoof of the very idea of praying for God to help "our" side win. (If anyone is not familiar with this short work of Twain's, I highly recommend it.)

If one assumes that God can control the weather to enable one's own side to win in battle, then the inevitable question is why God is limited to working his magic in that way. After all, why was the horror of World War II, with its millions of senseless deaths, even necessary in first place if a simple prayer to God could have fixed it. If God can determine the fate of battles by clearing up the skies, then surely God could have prevented Hitler from ever taking power, and surely God could have prevented massive horror of the Holocaust.

It is interesting how divine intervention, supposedly a manifestation of God's omnipotence, is actually conceived in rather limited terms. Why appeal to God to help fix the mess that an omnipotent God could have prevented in the first place?

Americans, Europeans, and claiming to be religious

2010-12-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

Three years ago, I posted an entry to my blog titled "Europe and the Failure of Orthodox Christianity" in which, among other things, I quoted from a researcher from a New York Times article who pointed out that Americans claim to be more religious than they actually are, while Europeans claim to be less religious than they actually are. The researcher, a Spanish sociologist named José Casanova, said

The interesting fact is that people responding to questions about religion lie in both directions. In America, people exaggerate how religious they are, and in Europe, it’s the other way around. That has to do with the situation of religion in both places. Americans think religion is a good thing and tend to feel guilty that they aren’t religious enough. In Europe, they think being religious is bad, and they actually feel guilty about being too religious.

This is borne out a recent study that was highlighted in an article in Slate magazine, which poses the question: Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they are?" It seems that Americans report going to church much more often than they actually do. Which then leads to this question:

Why do Americans and Canadians feel the need to overreport their religious attendance? You could say that religiosity for Americans is tied to their identity in a way that it is not for the Germans, the French, and the British. But that only restates the mystery. Why is religiosity tied to American identity?

The author of the Slate article, Shankar Vedantam, offers no definitive answer to that question. It does reinforce the notion that Americans are not really as different from Europeans on the subject of religion as people often assume.

Taking the Christmas story seriously, but not literally.

2010-12-23T20:29:00.001-08:00

Susan Strouse, a blogger who is the pastor of a small, progressive Lutheran church in San Francisco, writes about her personal odyssey in learning to take the Christmas story seriously, but not literally. Her entry begins:

About ten years ago, at a December gathering of a women’s clergy support group, someone brought a beautiful Nativity story book. As we passed it around, I found myself growing more and more uncomfortable. Finally I dared to say the unthinkable: “But I don’t believe that this ever really happened.”
They all laughed and said, “Well, neither do we. It’s a story; it’s not literal history.”

She wonders how many people, not just clergy, but those in the pews, also feel the same way. I like this comment:

I had the wonderful experience of an 80-something woman in my previous congregation, after reading Why Christianity Must Change or Die by John Shelby Spong, exclaiming to me, “I wish I’d read this 70 years ago!”

The fatal implications of religious dogma

2010-12-16T14:03:00.001-08:00

The leadership of the Catholic Church in the US was very upset when a Catholic Hospital in Arizona performed an emergency abortion to save a mother's life. Now it is being reported that Bishop Thomas Olmstead

is not only castigating Catholic Healthcare West, the group that runs St. Joseph's Hospital, for saving her life but threatening them in order to force them to promise that doctors will never save a woman's life if it requires an emergency abortion ever again...Bishop Olmstead calls the life-saving procedure "morally wrong" even though he doesn't deny that it almost certainly saved her life.

The irony is, of course, that the Catholic Church defines itself as a "pro-life" church and considers its position on abortion to be a "pro-life" stance. I guess saving the life of a mother is less important than letting her (and her fetus) die, all for the sake of a rigid and morally incomprehensible religious dogma.

A mature faith and an immature faith

2010-12-13T09:00:00.001-08:00

I found this interesting article about the religious faith of Elizabeth Edwards. In her farewell statement, she said, "You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces -- my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope." Because she made no mention of God in that statement, people of a certain sensibility were offended. For example, blogger Donald Douglas attacked her for having the temerity of not holding Douglas's own theological views, and then went off half cocked with the ridiculous statement, "Being anti-religion is cool, so Edwards' non-theological theology gets props from the neo-communists."

How one can draw sweeping conclusions about another person's theology based on what they didn't say in a single sentence is a little odd, but based on other information in the above cited article, it is clear that what she believed about God was anything but simplistic. Any deviation from conservative orthodoxy is not, of course, a "non-theological theology", and the "neo-communists" remark by Douglas is laughable. But what particularly caught my eye in this article about Edwards was the following view that Edwards once expressed on divine intervention:

"I have, I think, somewhat of an odd version of God," Edwards explained to an audience of women bloggers when asked how her beliefs inform her politics. "I do not have an intervening God. I don't think I can pray to him -- or her -- to cure me of cancer."

Edwards, according to Stan, laughed after describing God as "her" -- hardly a heresy and certainly understandable given her audience -- and continued on:

"I appreciate other people's prayers for that [a cure for her cancer], but I believe that we are given a set of guidelines, and that we are obligated to live our lives with a view to those guidelines. And I don't believe that we should live our lives that way for some promise of eternal life, but because that's what's right. We should do those things because that's what's right."

Wise words indeed. In fact, I would argue that there is nothing odd at all about not believing that God will cure her of cancer if she prays for it. This, to me, is the hallmark of a more mature faith.

Charitable motives and ulterior motives

2010-11-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

I recently returned from a trip to Nicaragua where I was involved in a project to help build latrines in a remote and extremely impoverished community. Spending time with people who are so poor and yet so warm and welcoming can be a life changing experience.

On the plane trip to Managua, a fair number of the passengers were all wearing the same t-shirt that indicated that they were part of some sort of American based religious based mission trip. Similarly, on the return trip, a different group of people were all wearing a different t-shirt that indicated that they were also participants on a religious mission trip.

There is no question that helping the poor is often a religious imperative. Certainly the Bible talks about this. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable that states, "for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me." But they question I had was whether the people on these mission trips had ulterior motives in whatever it was they were doing. Were they building schools for its own sake, or were they also "saving souls" on the side?

In talking with some other people who were on the same project that I was, and who had some familiarity with these sorts of religious based mission trip, the answer appears to be in most cases that that these service trips have a component of proselytization.

If this is true, then I find this particularly offensive. I think that proselytizing is bad enough under any circumstances, but to do so as part of a mission directed at helping those who are disadvantaged, I it is doubly offensive. If one is going to help the poor, by all means I think they should. But if there is an ulterior motive, if proselytizing is part of the same mission as well, then it seems to me that one is essentially holding those one helps hostage to one's good graces. "Sure, I'll help build your school, but only if you'll listen to me tell you why my religion is better than whatever you currently believe."

I have this silly idea that helping others in need should serve as its own reward, should be done for its own sake. I have no problem with demonstrating that acts of charity and social justice are performed as an expression of one's religious faith. But there is a difference between saying, "I help you because my faith says I should," and saying, "I am going to use this opportunity to help you in your time of need as a means of trying to convert you to my faith."

Even the wearing of identical t-shirts on the plane seemed like a way of advertising their religious faith. I am reminded of what Jesus said about prayer in Matthew 6: "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Perhaps I am being too harsh, but I can't help but wonder if a group of people all wearing a t-shirt on the airplane boldly advertising their religious mission trip is a little bit like praying in public to make a show of what you are doing.

Knowing everything you need to know

2010-09-09T21:02:00.000-07:00

This satirical article from the Onion, titled "Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims", is so successful as a work of satire precisely because there is so much truth in what it says. It could easily describe people like Terry Jones, the Koran-burning pastor, or about lots of other people who would rather not let little things like knowledge get in the way of their prejudices.

Of course, the same thing could be said about many others sorts of prejudices as well. For example (and I have written about this before), when noted atheist blogger PZ Myers says that he already knows everything he needs to know about religion (and even coined an argument known as "The Courtier's Reply" to justify willful ignorance), he is illustrating this "I already know everything I need to so don't confuse me with the facts" phenomenon very well. Certainly, this sort of ignorance has resided at the heart of many sorts of prejudices. However, it does seem lately that the prejudice that has become so prevalent, at least in American society, is that which is directed at Muslims. That is probably why I have been writing about Muslims a lot lately in my blog. I think I feel like we who care about inclusion have a responsibility to stand up for those who are marginalized in society, and it does seem like the prejudice du jour seems to be directed at Muslims.

Nicholas Kristof wrote an excellent column in the New York Times recently about the history of prejudice against marginalized groups in American society. He chronicles the various groups in American history who have been subjected to intolerance, over the years, including Catholics and Jews. So there is nothing new in this. Although Kristof ultimately expresses some optimism about the ability of Americans to overcome prejudice, he makes at one point an interesting comment: "Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days."

Perhaps it goes back even further than cave-man days. I can't help but wonder if our primate genes do lie behind our tribalism. I recently read a book by Vanessa Woods, Bonobo Handshake, that contrasted the personalities of our species' two closest relative: chimps and bonobos. Chimps seem to be plagued by a terribly violent tribalistic impulse. They are not fond of chimps who aren't from their group to say the least. They (or at least the males) will often attack chimps from outside their own group in horrible and bloodthirsty ways that mirror humanity's own warrior brutality. According to the author, this violent chimp tribalism can even take place if you take a group of chimps and divide them up into two separate groupings; after six months or so, the former group kinship will be forgotten and chimps from one of the recently separated groups may attack chimps from the other, even though they all used to belong to the same group.

Knowing this, part of me does despair that we have a little bit of the violent chimp within us. Vanessa Woods writes in her book about chimps and bonobos while also providing background stories about the horrific genocidal wars taking place in the areas near where she researched the bonobos, in Rwanda and Congo. And yet, we humans, violent as we often are, are also more than that. Bonobos, who choose a peaceful, highly sexualized, and matriarchal social arrangement, are also close to us genetically. And what about human altruism? Where does it fit into the evolutionary story, and if tribalism and violence is a part of what we are, can it not also be said that altruism is also part of what defines us? We are often proud of our altruism and even consider it part of what makes us unique. Apparently many scientists had thought that humans were essentially the only species capable of altruism, but Vanessa Woods argues that she has witnessed examples of altruism among bonobos. For that matter, she cites a researcher who claims that chimps, violent though they so often are, are capable of altruism as well. So maybe altruism is also rooted in our primate past.

The upshot of all of this is that it does seem that humans are capable of being inclusive as well as intolerant and bigoted. When prejudices are justified by people insisting that they already know everything that they need to know about those they stigmatize, they are expressing something other than the best that humans can be. That is not to their credit. And yet, while humans have shown themselves repeatedly to be tribalistic and to turn their bigotry against those they consider outsiders from their group, humans have also shown time and again that they are capable of reaching out with compassion and a moral sense of inclusion to those who are different.

What is essential to religion?

2010-09-06T00:34:00.000-07:00

Tim Crane (who is an atheist but not militantly anti-religion) writes in the New York Times that "it is absolutely essential to religions that they make certain factual or historical claims,"

Really? Is this true? What are the historical claims that are essential to Buddhism, for example? (If Buddha had not existed, would not the same eightfold path of Buddhism still hold true?) What are the historical claims that progressive Christians who do not believe that Jesus was literally raised from the dead are making? Sure, they do assert that someone named Jesus lived a long time ago, but a lot of non-Christians also believe that.

Isn't Crane offering a narrow definition of religion that is informed by Christian orthodoxy?

The poor widow's offering

2010-08-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reported on a Berkeley study that showed that rich people are less altruistic than the poor are. The study found that

lower-income people were more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than were those with more wealth. They were more attuned to the needs of others and more committed generally to the values of egalitarianism.

The article goes on to say that

Empathy and compassion appeared to be the key ingredients in the greater generosity of those with lower incomes. And these two traits proved to be in increasingly short supply as people moved up the income spectrum.

When reading about this phenomenon, I am reminded of the story of the poor widow in Luke 21:1-4:

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on."

America needs more Muslims

2010-08-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

I thought this article, titled "Why America Needs More Muslims", makes a very good point, namely that part of what feeds the anti-Islamic prejudice going on right now is that a lot of Americans don't know any Muslims and thus hold views about Islam based on stereotypes rather than reality. I often wonder how many of those who are so vehemently anti-Muslim, who oppose the building of mosques throughout the US as well as the building of a Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, are actually acquainted with even a single Muslim in their personal lives. Familiarity doesn't always erase prejudice, of course, but I can't help but think that it might help to humanize people who are so easily demonized as "the Other".

Reza Aslan on atheist fundamentalism

2010-08-15T21:48:00.000-07:00

Reza Aslan (who wrote an excellent history of Islam titled "No god but God") has penned a very nice article for the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" website about the relationship between the New Atheists and religious fundamentalists. He points out that many of the New Atheists are so zealous in their intolerance of religion (thus resembling religious fundamentalists) that in their zeal they have shown themselves to have little in common prior strain of serious philosophical atheism:

It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism--an atheist fundamentalism. The parallels with religious fundamentalism are obvious and startling: the conviction that they are in sole possession of truth (scientific or otherwise), the troubling lack of tolerance for the views of their critics (Dawkins has compared creationists to Holocaust deniers), the insistence on a literalist reading of scripture (more literalist, in fact, than one finds among most religious fundamentalists), the simplistic reductionism of the religious phenomenon, and, perhaps most bizarrely, their overwhelming sense of siege: the belief that they have been oppressed and marginalized by Western societies and are just not going to take it anymore.This is not the philosophical atheism of Feuerbach or Marx, Schopenhauer or Nietzsche (I am not the first to think that the new atheists give atheism a bad name). Neither is it the scientific agnosticism of Thomas Huxley or Herbert Spencer. This is, rather, a caricature of atheism: shallow scholarship mixed with evangelical fervor.

He goes on to point out that a willful and disdainful ignorance of religion seems to be a consistent characteristic of this movement:

The principle error of the new atheists lies in their inability to understand religion outside of its simplistic, exoteric, and absolutist connotations. Indeed, the most prominent characteristic of the new atheism--and what most differentiates it from traditional atheism--is its utter lack of literacy in the subject (religion) it is so desperate to refute. After all, religion is as much a discipline to be studied as it is an expression of faith. (I do not write books about, say, biology because I am not a biologist.) Religion, however it is defined, is occupied with transcendence--by which I mean that which lies beyond the manifest world and towards which consciousness is oriented--and transcendence necessarily encompasses certain theological connotations with which one ought to be familiar to properly critique belief in a god.

The comment about not writing books about biology without knowing something about the topic is particularly apropos. Many of the New Atheists seem to make a virtue out of not knowing anything about that which they condemn so vehemently; the so-called "Courtier's Reply" argument advanced by PZ Myers is an example of this claim that you don't need to know anything about religion to be able to dismiss it out of hand--and the interesting point is that Myers himself is a biologist who does not take kindly to people ignorant of biology making pronouncements about evolution.

Aslan also points out the fallacy of scientism--the belief that science can step out of its own domain and make pronouncements about subjects that do not fall within the scientific purview--which is to say, the human quest for meaning through religious myth and metaphor:

What the new atheists do not do, and what makes them so much like the religious fundamentalists they abhor, is admit that all metaphysical claims--be they about the possibility of a transcendent presence in the universe or the birth of the incarnate God on earth--are ultimately unknowable and, perhaps, beyond the purview of science. That may not be a slogan easily pasted on the side of a bus. But it is the hallmark of the scientific intellect.

What it means to be a Christian, part II

2010-07-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

God will punish the United States if we do not vote the way God wants us to in the 2010 elections, according to Cindy Jacobs. Who is Cindy Jacobs, you might ask? Well, according to her website, she is a prophet, so I guess it must be true.

The voices of bigotry are getting shriller

2010-07-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

It appears that right wing hatemongers have upped the ante in their smear campaign against Muslims:

Self-described “anti-jihadist” and conservative blogger Pamela Geller — the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) — has joined the chorus of right-wing paranoia. Earlier this month on MSNBC, Geller suggested the Islamic center is a “triumphal mosque” on “conquered lands.” Now her organization has recently launched a series of bus ads reading, “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!” in major cities, including San Francisco, Miami, and New York

The fact that this kind of hatred is so openly prevalent is a sad testimony to the state of American society. I am reminded of the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in the US during 1920s, or the anti-semitic radio broadcasts of Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. We like to think that we have moved beyond that sort of bigotry in this country, but clearly we have not.

What it means to be a Christian, part I

2010-07-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

Author Ann Rice has announced on her Facebook page that she has quit being a Christian. Her reasoning is as follows:

I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.

Understandable objections, although perhaps the problem may be that she is just hanging around with the wrong bunch of Christians. I personally know many Christians who are not anti-gay, anti-feminist, or anti-science. It is interesting to hear this announcement from Rice just days after the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in the US, formally and publicly welcomed gay pastors into the denomination. Of course, what it really boils down to is that "Christian" is a label, and like a lot of labels you can still be a person of faith whether you call yourself a "Christian" or not. She apparently hasn't given up on her faith, stating that she "remain[s] committed to Christ as always."

Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal church has, meanwhile, presented a different vision of what it means to be a Christian than the one that Ann Rice describes, in a sermon published in the UK newspaper The Guardian. Schori states that "We must challenge the human tendency to insist that dignity doesn't apply to the poor, or to immigrants, or to women, or Muslims, or gay and lesbian people."

That's a vision of Christianity that I can live with.

The seeds of justice

2010-07-23T15:02:00.001-07:00

David Brooks has written a column for the New York Times in which he discusses the idea that morality is a product of our evolutionary past. According to this view, our ancestors developed a sense of what successfully facilitated social cooperation, and that therein lies the basis of an innate moral sense that all of us have (and which even small infants show some expression of). Interestingly enough, Brooks makes a connection in his article between morality and justice; he quotes a researcher who says that "people have a rudimentary sense of justice from a very early age."

He also discusses the relationship between morality and empathy:

People who behave morally don’t generally do it because they have greater knowledge; they do it because they have a greater sensitivity to other people’s points of view. Hauser reported on research showing that bullies are surprisingly sophisticated at reading other people’s intentions, but they’re not good at anticipating and feeling other people’s pain.

The very existence of bullies points to the fact that not everyone has an equally developed sense of morality--bullies seem to express less moral sense than compassionate people, at least when they bully others--which ultimately implies that not everyone has an equally developed sense of empathy. Even if there is an innate moral sense within us as humans, it is still something that needs to be cultivated to be fully manifest. And this struggle to cultivate our morality has been played out in human history. Oppressive human social structures and ideologies--the list is long, but could include such things as slavery, sexism, racism, oligarchy, torture, economic exploitation--can all be seen as examples of an institutionalized lack of empathy. It has been a historical struggle to cultivate greater empathy at a societal level in order that people might understand that, for example, sexism is a bad thing, and further that society should reflect this understanding at an institutional level. Achieving this understanding has meant appealing to people's innate moral sense, their sense of justice, to inspire them to alter societal structures to make them more just.

When we stand up for society's victims--the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, the religious minority, the excluded--we are expanding upon that innate moral sense and that innate sense of justice. But that innate sense will be stunted unless it is nourished. The seeds of justice may lie within us, but we have to cultivate them to make them grow.

More on the rising tide of intolerance

2010-07-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich has weighed in on the Ground Zero mosque issue, and (I'm sure this comes as no surprise) it turns out that he's against the building of that mosque. His reasoning? He argues that since there isn't freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia, we shouldn't have freedom of religion in New York City either:

...There are no churches or synagogues in all of Saudi Arabia. In fact no Christian or Jew can even enter Mecca...If the people behind the Cordoba House were serious about religious toleration, they would be imploring the Saudis, as fellow Muslims, to immediately open up Mecca to all and immediately announce their intention to allow non-Muslim houses of worship in the Kingdom.

I think it is fair to say that if you follow the convoluted logic behind that argument, you have a bright future ahead of you as an upstanding member of the conservative movement. I wish I were making all of this up, because it shows just how wacko the wacko right really has become, and it also shows to what degree hatred has become part of mainstream American politics.

Meanwhile, Yahoo News has published a story on the rise in protests against the erection of mosques everywhere, not just New York City. The article refers to "the site of a mosque in Columbia, Tennessee, that had been burned down and vandalized with painted swastikas in 2008."

"The local tiny Muslim community was in a state of shock because most of them were born in America and had lived very happily in the small community," he says. "People say, 'Go back home,' and they say, 'Where do we go? This is our home.' "

The painting of swastikas as part of the vandalism summarizes pretty well what is going on here. The headline for the Yahoo article reads, "Anti-mosque protests on the rise, say Muslim advocates." Now imagine if the headline had read, "Anti-synagogue protests on the rise, say Jewish advocates." It's funny what sounds like a horrible expression of bigotry suddenly becomes acceptable to a certain element in our society once they aim their bigotry at a different religious group.

The article also reports that

Of course, opponents of mosques do not consider themselves bigots, and many are genuinely concerned that mosques may help produce homegrown terrorists.

Of course, few people care to label themselves as bigots--just as few apologists for torture by the US ever actually use the word "torture" to describe what they advocate. Labels are like that. But the whole "terrorist" connection is rather interesting. I have cited, in earlier blog postings, the example of Christian-based terrorism in Mexico that is derived from the teachings of an American evangelist named John Eldredge. Of course, Eldredge disavows any responsibility for how his teachings are being used, but the point is that these terrorists are using Christianity to justify their violence--just as those who commit acts of terrorism in the name of Islam use the Muslim religion to justify their own violence. Interestingly enough, you don't hear too many of the Islamophobes using the example of Eldredge to justify the prevention of churches being built.

And speaking of terrorism, a right wing terrorist just the other day got into a shootout with the California Highway Patrol. He is said to have been "angry with "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items, and as a result "he traveled to San Francisco and planned to attack two nonprofit groups there 'to start a revolution'".

But I somehow don't expect that Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin will have much to say about that.

The Onion reports that God is retiring

2010-07-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

The satirical website The Onion reports that God is considering retirement.

The article reports:

He Who Commanded Light to Shine Out of Darkness told reporters that his biggest regret was putting his job above spending more time with his son. In particular, God mentioned that he deeply lamented missing his only child's once-in-a-lifetime crucifixion.

"Your son's down there being martyred in front of all these people, but you can't be there for it," said God, his voice cracking slightly. "He thought I'd forsaken him. Of course, I was tied up working on something that seemed important at the time but that I can't even remember now. And I'll never get that moment back."

Many worry that God's retirement could create a void at the helm of creation that no omnipotent deity would be available to fill. However, sources close to the Heavenly Father pointed out that he has been gradually delegating key responsibilities to respected subordinates, such as the Holy Ghost, for at least an eon.

Attempting to downplay such concerns, God told reporters that he wasn't "going anywhere just yet" and that, in any case, the universe was largely self-sustaining these days.

You see, that's the whole problem with omnipotence!

"Refudiating" hatred--a tall order, apparently

2010-07-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

It seems that Sarah Palin has weighed in on the question of building a Mosque near Ground Zero, and you can guess which side of the issue she had taken. The story of how she used the non-existent word "refudiate" when she wrote on Twitter about the issue, then deleted the Tweet out of apparent embarrassment while at the same time claiming that she is just being creative like Shakespeare was, definitely makes for entertaining reading.

Meanwhile, in other news, down in Southern California in a place called Temecula Valley, which funnily enough is pretty darned far from Ground Zero, a vocal group of people have objected to the building of a mosque. According to the LA Times, one of the leaders of the opposition is Bill Rench, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, who (and I wish I were making this up, but unfortunately I am not) said "the two religions 'mix like oil and water' and predicted a 'confrontational atmosphere' if the project moves forward.

I hate to break it to Pastor Bill Rench, but the only people doing the confronting are he and his ilk.

All of which illustrates the point that the objection to the building of a mosque at Ground Zero really has nothing to do with any alleged sensitivity to the victims (but you knew that, since Muslims were counted among the victims of that act of terrorism), but rather are part of a pattern of bigotry that extends across the country.

On not wanting that kind of religion

2010-07-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times book review section features a review by Lauren Winner in which she writes about Eric Lax's book Faith Interrupted. Winner notes that Lax, who writes of his lost faith, seems unable to handle the idea of a faith imbued with ambiguity and doubt:

Yet Lax does not seem interested in cultivating a spiritual life shot through with doubt. He doesn’t want an ambivalent (or, one might say, mature) faith; rather, he writes, recalling the aftermath of his parents’ deaths, “what I wanted to have was what I’d always had, but the faith I had accepted without question and could articulate with catechismal rote could not be recaptured.” Of course, many of us come to a place where such faith is neither possible nor even desirable; I suspect my own small Episcopal church would be largely empty on Sundays if anyone who ever questioned the Creed, anyone whose faith life included seasons of aridity, stayed home.

Based on those comments, Lax comes across as someone who Marcus Borg would describe as having made the transition from "pre-critical naivete" to "critical thinking" without ever found a way towards what Borg calls "postcritical naivete". I think it might be worth asking why it is that a lot of people make the first transition but not the second (and there are many people with religious upbringings for whom this is the case--Bart Ehrman comes to mind as famous example). Lax, as described in the above quote, wistfully longs for the dogmatic certainty of his upbringing, and so perhaps the answer in his case is that he would find a religion of ambiguity and uncertainty to be unfulfilling because it would not address this desire to return to a childlike sense of certainty. On the other hand, I often tend to think that people often stop at the "critical thinking" phase not so much because of what they want but because of their own limitations in defining religion--their conception of what religion necessarily is encapsulated in that childlike conception and in some sense it just doesn't occur to them that a religion can be anything else. Certainly a lot of the New Atheists subscribe to this simplistic notion of religion.

Perhaps there is a little of both going on. When many atheists are confronted with progressive or non-theistic forms of religion that don't conform to their stereotypes about religion, two common responses are either to deride such religious ideas for being vague or ill-defined (thus indicating a strong attachment to a dogmatic certainty that resembles the childlike religion that Lax was attached to), or to simply pose the question, "What's the point of such a religion?" While the former objection is rooted in an attachment to the notion of dogmatic certainty as a religious virtue, I think the latter question in particular expresses the problem that a religion of ambiguity or uncertainty doesn't seem to be particularly attractive to some people.

I wonder how much of this is all interrelated. Maybe sometimes, if you are attached to the idea of a religion offering childlike certainty--whether you reject that religion or not--then maybe the reason that a religion of ambiguity and uncertainty can in some sense be so under the radar that is that there are many who, like Eric Lax, find any themselves wistfully attached at some level to a religious certainty that their thinking minds know is not a valid option. Any other kind of religion is thus out of the question. The result is that they are left with no sense of faith at all.

The truth of a work of art--or a religious doctrine

2010-07-05T12:18:00.001-07:00

Today's New York Times op-ed page contained an essay by someone who spent considerable effort to try to find the actual diner depicted in Edward Hopper's famous painting "Nighthawks". The story makes for a good read, and yet there is a an almost plainly self-evident revelation late in the column. The author turns to a book about Hopper and reads that

the diner was “based partly on an all-night coffee stand Hopper saw on Greenwich Avenue ... ‘only more so,’” and that Hopper himself said: “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”

Partly. More so. Simplified. The hidden truth became clearer. The diner began to fade. And then I saw it — on every triangular corner, in the candy shop’s cornice and the newsstand’s advertisement for 5-cent cigars, in the bakery’s curved window and the liquor store’s ghostly wedge, in the dark bricks that loom in the background of every Village street.

Here we see the expression of an essential point about art--that it is not just a literal depiction of objective reality, but rather speaks deeper truths that spring from the imagination of the artist.

This same thing could also be said about religious doctrines and scriptures, could it not?

Christianity and violence

2010-07-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote about a violent drug gang in Mexico using John Eldredge's form of American fundamentalist Christianity as inspiration. Naturally, Eldredge disavows any responsibility for the impact of his views on Mexican drug terror, but here's an article that quotes extensively from Eldredge and shows how violent his language really is.

Of course, one can certainly point out that Eldredge's theology, or those who commit violence or terror in the name of the sort of faith that he advocates, in no way represents Christianity as a whole--just as one can point out that Muslim terrorists in no way represent Islam as a whole. That is really the point, isn't it? We shouldn't be stigmatizing any religion based on its extremist elements. The problem seems to be that terrorism by certain religions gets lots of media play while Christian terrorism gets little attention. Maybe it is time to recognize that any religion, especially a major world religion with sufficient critical mass to produce its own diversity of thought, can have its extremists or violent elements; and it is a mistake to paint a picture of any religion with too broad a brush.

God hears children's prayers better?

2010-07-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

In the midst of a tragic story in the New York Times of a soldier who lost both his arms and his legs comes this quote from his mother:

“That was one of the worst experiences of my life without a doubt,” she said. “I went back to my room and called one of my best friends, whose son is a youth minister, to get the children to pray. God hears children’s prayers better. I said, ‘Get the prayer chain going. I’m losing him. I’m losing him.’
“If I hadn’t been there,” she added, “I feel I would have lost him.”

I feel great sympathy for this woman and the pain she was going through, and given her experience I certainly give her a lot of leeway to express her pain in ways that may not make sense to me. But at the same time I also think it is really sad to hear anyone say something like that. It does make me wonder if there is a common belief out that that somehow "God hears children's prayers better," or that the only thing standing between someone living an dying is a loved one who prays hard enough or who enlists an army of children to pray on their behalf. And what does that say to the people whose loved ones don't pull through? Are we supposed to tell them that they didn't pray hard enough or make use of their local youth minister that the death of their loved one is somehow their fault?

Against omnipotence

2010-06-27T08:52:00.001-07:00

The Tikkun web site has published an article by Be Scofield that lays out many arguments against the notion of an omnipotent, interventionist deity. Much of what he says about the problem of God playing favorites in response to prayer echoes what John Shelby Spong has written on the subject of prayer (and his use of non-theistic in describing God suggests a possible connection to Spong.) Scofield writes this:

If one abandons the notion that God can intervene in the world to answer prayer God all of a sudden looks much different. Gone is the notion that the Holocaust could have been prevented and was part of God’s divine and “awesome” plan. Gone is the immense power for God to take sides in war as illustrated in the Hebrew Bible. Gone is a God that plays favorites. No longer can God be omnipotent as previously understood because God lacks the power to act in the world. For many who begin to interpret the divine in this non-theistic new light, God then becomes synonymous with love, creative energy and relatedness. Just because the theology of yesterday is insufficient for our modern standards doesn’t mean we need to abandon God, religion or appreciation for the divine.

Well stated, and I couldn't agree more.

Steven Colbert interviews Father Guido Sarducci

2010-06-24T11:18:00.001-07:00

Father Guido Sarducci (one of the regular characters from the early days of SNL) appears on the Steven Colbert show to talk about Glen Beck. In the process, he explains, among other things, what makes one a good prophet:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Prophet Glenn Beck - Father Guido Sarducci

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Fox News

Faith against capital punishment

2010-06-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Deseret News reports that a Catholic bishop is among the founding members of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty:

"We oppose capital punishment not just for what it does to those guilty of horrible crimes, but for how it affects society," says Bishop John C. Wester, of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Halal meals for the hungry

2010-06-16T16:48:00.000-07:00

From the San Jose Mercury comes this story:

This summer, a group of Silicon Valley-based Muslims will serve all-halal meals to the hungry from a roving food truck — an effort that's the first of its kind in the Bay Area, perhaps in the nation.

Although meals are halal, they are freely given to anyone regardless of faith:

The Muslim group doesn't ask for any credentials or references before handing out the food and doesn't know how many Muslims or non-Muslims it feeds.
"Frankly, we don't ask, and we don't care," Ashraf said.

Differences shall not be tolerated

2010-06-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

Arizona is clearly not the only place in the world where hatred rears its ugly head. In the Netherlands, a party that calls for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the country has gained seats in parliament, from nine to 24.

Naturally, the usual band of right wing bloggers are celebrating this election outcome.

The headline in the Washington Post blog entry on this subject reads, "Anti-Islam Party Surges in Netherlands." If you imagine for a moment substituting the word "Jew" for Islam in that headline it would become just a little more clear just what is going on here. Some things just never change, do they?

Meanwhile, Great Britain has enacted a new law requiring that all spouses of legal British residents be able to speak English before they can enter the country. The Telegraph points out that Queen Victoria would never have been born if that law had been effect in the nineteenth century. The AP article on this suggests that "such a move would likely go against the grain of even the more conservative elements of American society, where the diversity of languages has widely been seen as a sign of cultural vibrancy."

Well, maybe not in Arizona.

Apologizing for being a Christian

2010-06-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

I was amused by this blog entry that describes liberal Christians who are ashamed to be associated with those other Christians.

Which reminds of the following video that was made at a Vancouver poetry slam, and that begins with the words, "I am a Christian. I'm sorry." It is too bad that certain strains of conservative Christianity have so poisoned the popular conception of what Christianity is that liberal Christians have to go out of their way to make it clear that they aren't like that. But there you have it.

Is justice irrational?

2010-06-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

I found this quote from an article in the Sunday New York Times book review section interesting because of its the implicit bias that it reveals:

Consider an experiment economists call “the ultimatum game”: The experimenter gives one player, the sender, $20 to distribute between himself and another player, the receiver. An egalitarian sender might propose a split of $10 each. A more selfish sender might propose to give the receiver only $1, keeping $19 for himself. If the receiver accepts the deal, the two players collect their shares. If the receiver rejects the deal, both walk away with nothing. Were humans perfectly rational, the receiver would accept whatever is offered: even a dollar is better than nothing, right? Instead, researchers find, receivers will reject an overly lopsided deal, gladly giving up their shares just to punish the stingy senders.

But wait. Why is it more "rational" to accept whatever money is offered to you even if someone else gets more money out of the deal? Why is acceptance of an unequal transaction "rational"? There is a sort of implicit libertarian sort of logic embedded in that statement that would make Rand Paul proud. Without even questioning this assumption, the reviewer in this article takes for granted the notion (also apparently expressed by the author of the book she is reviewing) that it is more "rational" to accept a greater amount money in an unequal transaction than the zero dollars that would be accepted were one to reject the transaction altogether. Behind that assumption lies a further one--that concern for maximizing whatever one can acquire for one's self is the only truly rational basis for human behavior. But in fact there is simply no reason to assume this. Humans, and in fact other primates as well, are social animals who often adhere to concepts of justice and fairness:

According to research due to be published in the journal Animal Behaviour, fairness is not only essential to the human social contract, it also plays an important role in the lives of nonhuman primates more generally. Sarah F. Brosnan and colleagues conducted a series of behavioral tests with a colony of chimpanzees housed at the University of Texas in order to find out how they would respond when faced with an unfair distribution of resources. A previous study in the journal Nature by Brosnan and Frans de Waal found that capuchin monkeys would refuse a food item when they saw that another member of their group had received a more desired item at the same time (a grape instead of a slice of cucumber). Some individuals not only rejected the food, they even threw it back into the researchers face. The monkeys seemed to recognize that something was unfair and they responded accordingly. This raised the provocative question: can the basis of the social contract be found in our evolutionary cousins?

The upshot of this is that for us primates, transactions have a social character, and one could just as easily argue that it is perfectly rational for humans to take into consideration how a transaction affects other people besides themselves in evaluating whether to participate in the transaction or not. The answer that you give to that question may say more about your own biases than it does about what rationality really means.

I would argue that "rational" doesn't just have to translate to "how something will benefit me personally the most". It is possible to conceive of a rationality that accounts for how others besides one's self will benefit or be harmed by it, or how equitably a transaction treats all the parties involved. This understanding lies at the basis of many concepts of justice--and I happen to think that justice is actually a perfectly rational concept.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

2010-06-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose
And sometimes the blues get hold of you
Just when you thought you had made it

-- Carole King, "Sweet Seasons"

When I was younger and more optimistic than I am today, I thought that I saw in the sweep of history the still voice of God operating through the struggles and pains of developments of ideas that coursed through world events. No, I didn't see God as guiding or controlling the what happened, but rather as offering us at all times the opportunity to be better people, both as individuals and as a societies. To the extent that we listened to God, I felt, we could move beyond our tribalism and into a more inclusive and tolerant society. The inclusive developments against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other sins of tribalism seemed like ways in which people were listening to the voice of God.

The problem was this: when you are in the midst of world history rather than standing outside of it, it is sometimes hard to see where the progress is being made.

Are we keeping a scorecard? Are things getting better or worse in the struggle for greater inclusiveness?

I take some comfort in reading that a community board in New York voted by a whopping 29-1 to allow the building of the mosque near Ground Zero. Score one for reason, tolerance, and common sense.

Yet, meanwhile, the fight continues in Arizona against SB 1070, which was signed into law a little over a month ago. Score one for bigotry, hate, and intolerance.

Of course, the legal and moral battle against SB 1070 isn't over yet, but the fact that such a law was passed in the first place shows that we have a long way to go in this country. Sometimes it just seems like every step forward towards tolerance and inclusion is matched with just as many steps back.

Of course, there is nothing new in American society about anti-immigrant bigotry. The Know-Nothing Party of the nineteenth century was a precursor to what is happening in Arizona today. As the Wikipedia article on the Know-Nothing movement describes it,

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values...

Sound familiar? Change the ethnic groups and it does seem like nothing has changed. Movements like these, which opposed those who are different in some way from the perceived cultural norm, have been rampant in the not just in the US, but in Europe as well, for a long time. In Europe, there is of course a long and sordid history of anti-Semitism, but these days it is more fashionable to spew hatred against Muslims, as demonstrated by the rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim parties of the far right (such as the Danish People's Party in Denmark), or by the recent law in Switzerland banning minarets.

In an essay in the Sunday New York Times book review, Geoff Nicholson writes of the cultural biases found in books of "facts" printed in the 19th century:

books of facts always display localized preferences, cultural values, sometimes straightforward prejudices. My “New American Cyclopaedia” (1872) tells me that in 1855 there were 25,858 people in New York who could neither read nor write, and 21,378 of them were Irish. This may well have been true, but why exactly did it need to be emphasized? Well, I think we might hazard a guess.

Nowadays, people toss around supposed statistics about the alleged percentage of terrorist acts committed today by Muslims. This need to categorize The Other by statistical means thus has a long and rich history. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I happened to be passing through Arizona when SB 1070 was first hitting the national news. The infamously bigoted sheriff Joe Arpaio was asked on the TV news what would be an example of a reasonable suspicion that someone might be an illegal immigrant. His answer--and this priceless but typical--was that speaking another language, or English with an accent, could be used as indicators that someone was an illegal immigrant. You could almost laugh at the absurdity of that statement if it were not so tragic. But you can see what this is really about--people who talk differently from us must be viewed with suspicion.

Yes, it is about fear of others, fear of the stranger--and yes, fear of people who talk or look differently from the way you do--that lies at the heart of so much tribalism. And it is tribalism that the world has struggled to overcome since the dawn of time.

There has always been that other strain, a strain of universalism and of tolerance. Religion has often been all about tribalism, and yet within religion there has always been the flip side. After all, Exodus 23:9 says, "You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt." Meanwhile, within the Christian tradition, Jesus was quite the poster child for inclusiveness. He was the guy who ate and drank with the excluded and outcasts of his society, and it pissed people off. And yet, so much of modern Christianity is stuck on its own forms of exclusionary practices. Sherry of "A Feather Adrift" recently linked to another blog that in turn cited an article on the Beliefnet website that criticized the trend towards open communion in many churches, complaining that "nothing is expected of those who receive Communion." Horror of horrors! The idea that something must be expected of you before you can be included in God's grace--well, I can see why the author of that article was so offended.

At the heart of tolerance and inclusion, I think, lies empathy. To the extent that we can cultivate empathy, tolerance and inclusion naturally follow. Maybe it helps if you have been excluded from something at some point in your life. Maybe it helps to know what the pain feels like of being excluded before you want to reach out and extend the hand of friendship to those who are excluded. If you always live safely and comfortably in your tribe, maybe you don't know what it is like to be excluded. Or maybe some people just don't care about such issues and would rather not think about them at all. In any case, it seems that the need to preserve the integrity of the tribe at all costs leads directly to intolerance, exclusion, racism, and bigotry. Those who are different threaten this integrity, or so it is felt.

Groucho Marx once said that he would not want to join a club that would have him as a member. I think that if it is a club spent its time deciding who was worthy and not worthy of being part of the select included few, I wouldn't want to join that club either.

But some days I wonder if we will ever see a world in which the tribal impulse is gone from our midst.

"Muscular Christianity" and Mexican terrorism

2010-05-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

I have an interest in Mexico, having done volunteer work there, and so the cover story of the May 31 New Yorker caught my eye. The article, by William Finnegan, is titled "Silver or Lead: The drug cartel La Familia gives local officials a choice: Take a bribe or a bullet." (Unfortunately, this article is unavailable online unless you are a subscriber). The article describes the reign of terror committed by a crime syndicate in Mexico:

On the morning before his arrival, the dismembered body of a young man was left in the middle of the main intersection. It was an instance of what people call corpse messaging. Usually it involves a mutilated body and a handwritten sign. “Talked too much.” “You get what you deserve.” The corpse’s message—terror—was clear enough and everybody knew who left it: La Familia Michoacana, a crime syndicate whose depredations pervade the life of the region.

This use of terror to enforce control over that region is horrific but effective. What caught my eye, though, was a passing reference in the article to the relationship between the group that commits these acts and evangelical Christianity:

La Familia's corpse messaging often mentions divine justice. Its soldiers are said to be required to carry Bibles or, alternatively, a self-published volume of epigrams by the gang's leaders, who is also known as El Chayo, or El Más Loco (the Craziest). El Chayo is inspired, in turn, it has been reported, by the muscular Christianity of John Eldredge, an American evangelist whose self-help best-seller "Wild at Heart" is reportedly studied, in Spanish translation, at La Familia training camps.

The author of the article moves on to other topics after making that comment. A good description of the use of Eldredge's "muscular Christianity" as a basis for the terrorism of La Familia can be found in this blog entry from last year, who in turn quotes from another blogger who explains what "muscular Christianity" is:

Eldredge’s books are targeted primarily at men and his writings have great appeal for men, many of whom feel that society has forced them to be like Mr. Rogers – harmless and just a little effeminate. Eldredge encourages men to be real men – to head to the wilderness and be the rugged warriors we all want to be if we look deep inside ourselves. Eldredge continually writes about William Wallace of Braveheart or Maximus, the main character in Gladiator – real manly men.”

La Familia has also been tied to a Christian extremist group called the New Jerusalem movement.

One of the messages left behind with a group of severed heads was the following: "La Familia doesn’t kill for money, doesn’t kill women, doesn’t kill innocent people. It only kills those who deserve to die. Everyone should know this: Divine justice."

Is a boycott the best way to oppose SB 1070?

2010-05-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Eleanor Goldberg of the Religion News Service reports that many faith leaders who have opposed the new anti-immigration law in Arizona are hesitant to endorse a boycott of the state:

Yet a central feature of the apartheid fight — a church-led boycott against South Africa — hasn’t been fully embraced by religious groups who are treading carefully on whether to withhold spending in the Grand Canyon State.

I am somewhat torn on this question myself. While I am as outraged over this racist piece of legislation as anyone else, and thus am sympathetic towards the idea of a boycott (and I find myself rooting for Major League Baseball to pull its All-Star game out of the state next year), at the same time, I am also sympathetic to the argument that an economic boycott would hurt many of the very people who we want to be supporting--since many Hispanics in Arizona work in the hospitality industry. I am also a little unclear as to whether those who advocate a blanket boycott would extend it to the many Native American tribes who live in the state, including the Navajo Nation and the Hopi and Apache reservations.

So what do you think? Is a blanket economic boycott the best way to oppose this law or not?

More news on the terrorism front

2010-05-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

Amanda Robb has written an investigative report into the murder of George Tiller by Scott Roeder. While Roeder has been depicted as a "lone wolf", it appears that he is well connected with extremist Christian groups that advocate similar acts of terrorism against doctors who perform abortions.

And in other news, a right wing radio host has said that he "hopes" that a mosque in New York City that is to be built near the World Trade Center site will be blown up.

God and prayer

2010-05-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here is a cartoon from the blogger NakedPastor that I think nicely summarizes the problem with the idea that God somehow intervenes with miraculous acts of omnipotent power to answer our prayers--but only sometimes.

When things go the way we prayed them, people often see that as some sort of proof that God answers prayers. But how can that be any "proof" of anything, when there are so many clear counterexamples? Sometimes I think that more people need to study statistics in school, so they would better understand that no proof lies in selectively picking the desired outcomes of predicted events after the fact.

H/T James McGrath.

Muslim terrorism versus anti-Muslim terrorism

2010-05-21T09:16:00.001-07:00

I found an interesting article about the double standard in media coverage between the coverage of terrorism committed by Muslims and terrorism committed against Muslims. Guess which of the two gets the big coverage and which is virtually ignored by the US national news media?

Should I care about who wins the Miss USA pageant?

2010-05-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I really don't care about beauty pageants. They don't interest me, I find them pointless, and I am not really sure what purpose they are supposed to serve in the twenty first century world. Still, the brouhaha last year about Carrie Prejean's homophobic comments showed that what transpires in those pageants can sometimes reflect issues in the real world; and now this year, something truly controversial has happened--a Muslim American won the contest!

You can of course imagine that the usual crowd of anti-Muslim bigots are foaming at the mouth over this, and you would be right.

Religious intolerance in NYC

2010-05-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

Some people in New York are offended by the building of a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center bombings. Clearly these objections to the mosque are rooted in bigotry rather than common sense. Obviously, the people who committed those acts of terrorism do not speak for Islam any more than the man who gunned down abortion doctor George Tiller speaks for Christianity, but you wouldn't hear people suggesting that it would be insensitive to have Christian church services located near the site of George Tiller's killing.

Columnist Andrea Peyser of the New York Post betrays her own prejudice in a column about this issue in which she characterizes a group with an explicit agenda of hostility towards Islam as a "human rights group". The name of the group? "Stop Islamicization of America" 'Nuff said.

It is clear that we have a long way to go towards interfaith dialogue. Fortunately, the press report that I cited above does indicate that not everyone looks at it in the same way:

Marvin Bethea, a paramedic who survived the toxic collapse of the twin towers and suffers from a range of afflictions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and asthma, said he supports the mosque.
"Not all Muslims are terrorists," Bethea said. "Muslims died on 9/11, as well. This is a tremendous gesture to show that we're not all full of hatred and bigotry."

Quote of the Day

2010-03-29T10:00:00.000-07:00

From Drew Tatusko:

Jesus became a heretic to the religion of his day. Perhaps part of what he revealed is that we are all heretics in the eyes of God. This is why faith is the ground of religion, not some puppet human authority that has the gall to claim sole possession of the Truth.

God's involvement

2010-03-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

An article was published on Yahoo's website today about a survey on American religious attitudes. The article begins by stating that "most Americans believe God is involved in their everyday lives and concerned with their personal well-being."

Four highlights were mentioned in the study:

82 percent of participants reported that they depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions.
71 percent said they believe that when good or bad things happen, these occurrences are simply part of God's plan for them.
61 percent indicated they believe God has determined the direction and course of their lives.
32 percent agreed with the statement: "There is no sense in planning a lot because ultimately my fate is in God's hands."

Of those four, I would categorically disagree with the last three, since all of them presuppose not just that God intervenes omnipotently in the world, but that God does so in such an overwhelmingly pervasive fashion that there is no room whatsoever for free will.

The first one, though, is more interesting. Maybe it is the old Quaker mystic in me, or maybe it is the influence of process theology in my thinking, but in any case, even as I reject the idea of divine omnipotence, the idea that the Divine is in some sense "speaking" to us is not a concept that I have a problem with. I think that many people, when they describe divine intervention, may tend to conflate omnipotent coercion with divine communication and describe both of those as "divine intervention". But in my view, they are quite different activities. "Speaking" to us, or offering us possibilities, or luring us towards greater creative and loving possibilities--that represents one way of describing the expression of divine activity in the world. But to say that God is actively involved in the world is not the same as saying that God coercively intervenes, or has some "plan" that ensures that everything will work out a certain way. The former describes the creative and open-ended potential of the universe; the latter describes an omnipotent force that controls the universe. I lean towards the first; I do not accept the idea of the latter.

A Church for People Like Us

2010-03-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

A nice column by Norman Lear on religious faith appeared on the "On Faith" web site recently.

A lot of people may associate Norman Lear with certain edgy and politically charged 1970s sitcoms such as "All in the Family" or "Maude". He is probably less well known for his religious faith, but in fact he was the producer of a very short lived 1991 sitcom with a religious element called "Sunday Dinner" (unfortunately, the reason for its short duration is that it actually wasn't very funny). One feature of "Sunday Dinner" was that one of the main characters sometimes held conversations with God.

In the "On Faith" column, Lear says:

I like the metaphor of the thousand-mile river. It passes through time zones and climate changes occur along its path. Responding to the changing climate, the trees, shrubbery and vegetation along the riverbank changes also. But it is the same water responsible for nourishing every bit of growth. There are spiritual waters, call it the River of Reverence, that nourishes all of us who grope for understanding on a journey that will last all our lives and beyond.

There should be a Church For People Like Us.

I agree with that sentiment, although, alas, I have come to the conclusion that there is no church for People Like Me.

Not dogmatic enough!

2010-02-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

By way of A Feather Adrift I found this entry by an atheist blogger who said that he respected fundamentalists more than liberal Christians because fundamentalists have a "coherent worldview" while liberal Christians are guilty of "picking various bits they like while ignoring the parts they don't care for."

This is a familiar refrain from many atheists and I have harped on this topic before ad nauseum. What some call a "coherent worldview" others would term a dogmatic, rigid, and close-minded way of viewing things. (Imagine that--developing a viewpoint based on picking what you agree with and rejecting what you disagree with! Evaluating ideas based on their merit! How reprehensible!) Some of us actually find dogmatic, rigid, and close-minded thinking to be something less than the best way of approaching the complexities of the world. Others, on the other hand, "respect" such outlooks. To each their own, I guess.

Religious tribalism

2010-02-19T14:34:00.000-08:00

A quote from It's Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian, by Samir Selmanovic:

If God created all humanity but gave life-giving knowledge--usually referred to as "revelation"--to only some of humanity, could God in any meaningful sense be thought of as the One God and not only as a god?

Wouldn't such a god be historically or geographically local and therefore either disinterested, powerless, or in some other way incapable of giving lifesaving knowledge to all humanity? To say that God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.

Oh, those god-denying religious atheists!

2010-02-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

I ran across another militant atheist blogger, Mano Singham, who is as misinformed as he is strident--in this case, attacking theologian John Haught as a "religious atheist" and as one who "denies god" (sic)--thus illustrating once again that those who defy misinformed stereotypes always seem to provoke the greatest outrage, and also illustrating for about the millionth time that militant atheists have pretty much the same views of religion that religious fundamentalists do.

The Onion explains intercessory prayer

2010-02-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

The Onion uses satire to explain the theology of intercessory prayer.

Quizzes and nuance

2010-02-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

I started to take a "Test Your Faith" quiz posted on the NPR web site that is supposed to measure how much of a doubter your are, but I found the categories and assumptions that lie behind those questions too difficult for me to relate to.

The first question, for example, asks: "Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?" To which I can only respond with questions of my own, such as: what is meant by "accurate knowledge"? Is a glimpse into some aspect of the ultimate reality the same as accurate knowledge? If two blind men have accurate knowledge of some part of an elephant, are they both right? Are they both wrong?

The second question asks, "Do you believe that some thinking being consciously made the universe?" I may not be very knowledgeable about Tillich, but even I can see a problem with that question right off the bat, since I for one don't think of God as "a" being. If I think that God as a concept belongs to a different ontological category than you or I, then the assumption behind this question falls apart, as far as I'm concerned. I notice that a lot of argumentative atheists often dismissively refer to God as "a" being whose existence cannot be proven, and I always feel that they are missing the point when they put it that way.

Question 3 asks, "Is there an identifiable force coursing through the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?" What do they mean by "force"? For example, is a creative principle the same as a force?

Question 4 asks, "Could prayer be in any way effective, that is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?" Since I couldn't even accept the premises behind the earlier "being" or "force" questions, that makes things a bit difficult, and furthermore, what does the question mean by "effective" and "responsive"? Setting that objection aside, there seems to be a hidden assumption that this posited "being " or "force" might "respond" in some coercive fashion, by effecting some result that one asked for through the exercise of its power. But "response" can mean many things; after all, if I tell a friend about a tragic event in my life, my friend might respond by crying. A sympathetic response is a response, after all.

Question 12 asks "Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?" Again, the question I have is, what do you mean by "knowable"?

Question 13 asks, "If someone were to say "The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme nor reason, and all life on earth is but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in a corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to be judged, noticed, or remembered," would you say, "Now that's going a bit far, that's a bit wrongheaded?" I wouldn't say "wrongheaded". I can understand why people might feel that way, and I sometimes feel that way myself. That being said, I generally don't see the universe that way.

Amazingly cool video

2010-02-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

HT to Ms. Kitty:

An atheist doesn't believe in an omnipotent deity

2010-02-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

Susan Jacoby, an atheist columnist at the "On Faith" web site, describes an atheist in this way:

Today, as in the past, atheists can say only that on the basis of the available evidence, we don't think an omnipotent deity has anything to do with either the ultimate origins of the universe or the ethical dilemmas that human beings confront every day.

According to that definition, a fair number of people of faith who don't believe in a omnipotent deity, ranging from bishop John Shelby Spong to process theologians, are actually atheists. Apparently they just don't know that they are atheists.

Christopher Hitchens decides who gets to be called a Christian

2010-02-01T13:48:00.001-08:00

...and, naturally, he gets it wrong. Here is what Hitchens says in an interview:

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

He sure sounds like a fundamentalist Christian at this point, doesn't he? The funny thing is that he is being interviewed here by a UU Christian, who of course doesn't fit into that stereotype at all, and when she points that out, Hitchens then responds by dismissing her faith as a "waste of time"

I think it is this arrogant pomposity--the notion that what's good for Christopher Hitchens is what is good for everyone else--that I find so annoying about him and others like him. I have always been a believer in religious pluralism and in the notion that when it comes to religion, whatever works for other people is probably okay, as long as it doesn't encourage them to do bad things to other people, and as long as they don't impose their beliefs on me or anyone else. When he says that religion just adds a superfluous layer to what could simply be people's raw convictions about right and wrong, he clearly misses the point that myth and metaphor and the language of the sacred speaks to people in ways that inspire them. Just because none of that inspires him, he somehow infers that it should not inspire anyone else either.

Whip It

2010-01-29T10:01:00.000-08:00

According to a new book, the previous pope used to whip himself "to get closer to Jesus".

If you ask me, I think that if those who engaged in self-flagellation instead spent a little more that time improving social justice for the poor and disenfranchised, they'd find themselves a lot closer to Jesus than whipping themselves would ever accomplish.

In a way, I think kind of activity is a product of the perverse notion, exemplified by such films as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, that Jesus's suffering was in and of itself some kind of a virtue, rather than a terrible and unfortunate consequence of the power of his life and message. Perhaps one can draw a straight line from the doctrine of substitutionary atonement to people whipping themselves. Sure, I wholeheartedly agree that it was virtuous that Jesus was willing to suffer and become a martyr for what he believed in; but in no way can I see that it was a good thing that these things happened to him. The idea that God wants anyone to suffer or thinks that torture is in any way desirable--be it inflicted by Empires or by one's own hand--makes a mockery of Divine compassion.

I can see that there is value to be found in developing self-discipline and even in certain forms of self-denial. Self-denial as a growth exercise is one thing; glorifying self-torture and ritualized suffering as some kind of saintly virtue or is another thing altogether. Given all the negativity about the human body found in certain forms of Christianity to begin with, maybe this isn't surprising. Equating Mary's supposed virginity with saintliness gives the message that the human body's natural urges take us away from the Divine ideal. If you really hate the human body enough to claim that virginity is saintly, then perhaps it is a small step from that to whipping one's self and thinking that this somehow makes one holier.

God and Haiti

2010-01-24T22:53:00.001-08:00

The disaster in Haiti is the latest in a long line of human tragedies that have led people to question what it means to believe in God. James Wood's op-ed column in today's New York Times suggests that there are only two possible responses to tragedies like these:

either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view).

Essentially Wood assumes that God can be conceived of only in two ways--as either the omnipotent interventionist deity of Christian orthodoxy, or as the God of deism. As anyone who has read my blog would expect, I find Wood's argument to be based on a false dichotomy that ignores theologies that posit God as an active but non-omnipotent presence in our lives.

What matters to me less than theology about God's nature, though, is the practical way that God is found in way we live our lives. As the hymn says, "Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est." (where there is charity and love, God is). Which is to say, when we help others, I think we are responding to God's call and God--whatever we define "God" to be--is in a sense acting through us.

I have been thinking more and more about this as I passed a recent birthday milestone and find myself as I am getting older wanting to make more of a difference in the world. I spent some time over Christmas and New Year's working on a volunteer project with a group of indigenous people in Latin America. This was the first time I have ever done this, and I found that it gave me a sense of purpose and meaning makes my own mundane life here at home seem rather empty by comparison. Even if organized religion is not a good match for me, I think there is a spirituality to be found in the love we express for humanity in concrete ways.

The Haiti tragedy is a reminder to me that it makes no sense for me to turn to divine omnipotence as our salvation in the face of human suffering. But it also reminds me all the more that the world is full of injustice, of people who are poor or otherwise suffering, and that when we are inspired to do something about these problems we are responding to something higher and greater than ourselves. I choose to call that something God, but whatever we choose to call it, the thing that matters the most is that we act.

Controversy in New Zealand

2009-12-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

Glynn Cardy, the vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City Church in Auckland, New Zealand has not updated his blog in a long time. He has almost always had something interesting to say; he is a progressive Christian who rejects many of the dogmas of traditional orthodoxy. It seems that he has made the news internationally with a controversial billboard that I think is hilarious but which some Christians found offensive. According to the BBC, Cardy "said the aim of the billboard had been to lampoon the literal interpretation of the Christmas conception story."

He goes on to say,

What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?

I think that for a lot of people, Christmas is about the former. I agree with Cardy; I think it should be about the latter.

The world is not scripted

2009-12-08T10:33:00.001-08:00

John Haught describes how the process of evolution serves as the basis of a much more interesting theology than the simplistic dogma of creationism, because evolution reveals to theologians a vision of God who "wills, but does not force, truly interesting outcomes to emerge in surprising new ways."

I believe that Haught generally has denied being a process theologian, but it is clear that his views are deeply influenced by it. This business of "willing but not forcing" expresses the notion that God has not scripted the history of the universe, but rather is a non-omnipotent co-participant in its creative processes.

This point is crucial, I think, to understanding what Haught is saying. Jerry Coyne, in his atheist blog, claimed sarcastically in response to this that Haught believed that "God is just a big playwright, directing a big script that none of us will ever be able to see to its end." This seems to be actually almost exactly the opposite of what Haught was in fact saying. Scripting is one thing, Haught argues, that God does not do.

Intercessory Prayer in a Nutshell

2009-11-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

The "Russell's Teapot" comic strips often presented some rather pointed critiques of Christian orthodoxy. Unfortunately, as is often the case with atheist criticisms of Christianity, the author of that comic strip conflates a critique of Christian orthodoxy with support for atheism per se, when in fact it is possible to agree with many of those criticisms without being an atheist. In any case, from a couple of years ago, here is a comic that summarizes intercessory prayer:

Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

2009-11-23T14:33:00.000-08:00

The brouhaha over whether Patrick Kennedy should take communion just reminds me once again that that when churches practice closed communion the practice can and often will be brandished as a cudgel by those in power against those who don't toe the "correct" theological line.

Jesus didn't impose preconditions on who got invited to the table, and thus it is ironic that certain churches claiming to follow Jesus do just the opposite. Closed communion and the resulting imposition of gate keeping rules by religious authorities stands in stark contrast to what Jesus, who opposed the rigidity and exclusionary practices of religious hierarchy, stood for.

What's the Bible say about rhinoplasty?

2009-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

Carrie Prejean tells Christianity Today that breast implants are not forbidden by the Bible:

"I don't think there's anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian," Prejean told the magazine, which advertises itself as a publication of "Evangelical conviction."

"I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shoudn't get breast implants," said Prejean, 22.

The list of elective surgeries invented long after the Bible was written and which the Bible doesn't prohibit is rather long. On the other hand, the list of biblical prohibitions (for example, in the book of Leviticus) that Ms. Prejean (along with the rest of us) ignores is also rather long. It is easy to mock Prejean here, who has made a name for herself as a spokeswoman for the bigoted Christian right, but it does raise an interesting point. When you rely on the Bible as a rigid guide to determine what is acceptable and what isn't, you end up losing your ability to think for yourself. And that's the real sin, as far as I'm concerned.

"A God-shaped hole at the heart of our being"

2009-11-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

Here is a quote by John Haught, taken from an interview with Amy Edelstein:

Sometimes people ask, “What is the evidence that the infinite exists?” For Augustine and for many religious people throughout the ages, the best evidence is the utter restlessness of the human heart. You could extend that also to the restlessness of the intellect itself. We all realize that no matter how much we know, there is yet more to be known; we all realize that no matter how much we get in life, how much we have, how much we possess, we are never fully filled up by it. So there is, in a sense, a God-shaped hole at the heart of our being. That’s what Augustine was saying—our hearts are restless until we rest in the infinite.

Finding common ground

2009-11-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

Michael Ruse, who is an atheist, argues in favor of tolerance and respect for people of faith in an excellent column that criticizes the militancy of the "new atheists", which he posted at the Guardian website. He lays out four broad reasons why he disagrees with them, and I think anyone interested in this topic will find that it makes for great reading.

I thought the following comment that he wrote in that column about the reaction he has gotten from some of the militant atheists was rather telling:

I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the "new atheists", loathe and detest my thinking. Richard Dawkins has likened me to the pusillanimous appeaser at Munich, Neville Chamberlain. Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, says (echoing Orwell) that only someone with pretensions to the intelligentsia could believe the silly things I believe. And energetic blogger PZ Myers refers to me as a "clueless gobshite" because I confessed to seeing why true believers might find the Kentucky Creationist Museum convincing. I will spare you what my fellow philosopher Dan Dennett has to say about me.

When Dawkins, Coyne, and Myers use such vitriol against a fellow atheist who doesn't toe their particular party line, this shows that their brutish behavior is not directed only against people of faith, but against anyone who thinks differently from the way they do.

I especially appreciated his comment about how tactically foolish it is for those who want to promote the teaching of evolution in schools to attack religious people who otherwise might be your erstwhile allies. This is in contrast to PZ Myers, who wrote a few years ago that he opposed efforts like the "Evolution Weekend" project that many churches promoted, because it would mean allying himself in some sense with some of the very people of faith he was busily insulting.

It is a remarkable idea that atheists and people of faith might actually be able to get along. The fundamentalists of both the atheist and the religious camps can have at each other. The rest of us, Michael Ruse included, can try to find a common ground for dialogue and move forward.

Mr. Deity explains the Trinity

2009-11-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

A bit of humor deflates a cherished, supposedly unassailable, and ultimately incomprehensible tenet of orthodox Christianity:

Interview with R. Crumb on his Genesis comic book

2009-10-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed R. Crumb about his new illustrated comic of the entire book of Genesis. You can read the interview here.

Quote of the Day

2009-10-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

From Sea Raven, who left this comment in John Shuck's blog:

In my work it has become clear to me that Jesus would not be a Christian today. So far as biblical scholars can tell, Jesus did not believe what the church later came to insist that everyone has to believe to avoid going to hell.

As I say often in my commentaries, Christianity is not about belief in a resuscitated corpse, nor is christianity about what happens after we die. Christianity, as Jesus preached it, is about US personally incarnating distributive justice-compassion in this life. That means, joining the program to create the kingdom -- in John Dominic Crossan's words, creating a "share world" as opposed to a "greed world," or, as I put it "Covenant" not "Empire."

Crossan's definition of god is of a kenotic being -- one whose presence is justice and life, and whose absence is injustice and death.

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act

2009-10-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

I thought this was pretty funny. "If we allow anyone to get divorced, before you know it people will be divorcing their dogs!"

Rick Steves on the spirituality of travel

2009-10-26T10:05:00.001-07:00

Rick Steves, who is a Lutheran, talks about travel, faith, and justice in this video from the ELCA.

One quote from the video that I like is this one: "It is too convenient to go down to Tijuana, build a house, come back, and then vote for your own self-interest." I think there is a lot of truth to that--it is easy for us to feel good about ourselves when we engage in charitable work or volunteer to help people in other parts of the world, without considering the broader picture of peace and justice issues.

And You Thought Hitler Gave Book Burning a Bad Rep

2009-10-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

A North Carolina church plans on holding a good old fashioned book burning on Halloween. Among the books to be burned are any English language version of the Bible that is not a King James translation, and works by Mother Teresa.

Spong's repsonse

2009-10-23T10:12:00.001-07:00

John Shelby Spong, not one to mince words, responds to the recent invitation from the Vatican for reactionary Anglicans to defect en masse to the Catholic Church:

[W]e have a sad picture of how out-of-date and irrelevant institutional Christianity has become. Here we have two unimpressive Christian leaders, rooted deeply in yesterday, jockeying publicly to see who can be the most prejudiced about the role of women and the place of homosexual people in the life of the Christian Church. It would be amusing if it were not so ludicrous.

This debate is by now rather tired and most of the world cares very little what either of these two leaders thinks. The Pope constantly parades before the world an uninformed homophobia and his attempt to suggest that women are "separate but equal" is almost pathetic. On his last trip to Africa where violence, bloodshed and massive hunger exist, his moral outrage was directed only toward the use of condoms to stop the spread of the HIV virus. Who can still take those attitudes seriously? The Archbishop of Canterbury, on the other hand, long ago sacrificed a commitment to truth on the altar of church unity, made peace with those infected with the prejudices of sexism and homophobia and acted as if unity could actually be achieved by rejecting women or gay people.

I am not sure that the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury represent the end all and be all of "institutional Christianity", but his point is well taken nonetheless. Neither the Pope nor the Archbishop of Canterbury have any relevance for a lot of people, and neither man has much moral credibility.

The good atheists and the bad atheists

2009-10-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

NPR ran a story reporting describing what it calls a "bitter rift" between those atheists who favor an aggressive and hostile stance towards religion and those who do not . NPR names the usual suspects in the former camp, including Hitchens, Dawkins, PZ Myers (to that list one could probably add Jerry Coyne and John Loftus). In the latter camps NPR mentions Paul Kurtz, who has this to say about those of his fellow atheists for whom vitriol and ridicule are tools of the trade:

"I consider them atheist fundamentalists," he says. "They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, they're very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good."

He's right that they are fundamentalists--some of them, like John Loftus, are in fact former evangelicals who simply changed teams without changing their mindsets as True Believers.

During the period of my life when I was a former-fundamentalist-turned-atheist (before I subsequently discovered progressive Christianity), I never gave religion that much thought one way or the other. I saw religion as something that I had outgrown, that no intelligent person believed in, and while I did not agree with religion, I also felt no need to actively attack it or its adherents. It simply was not a part of my life. So when I now look at someone like Hitchens, who was quoted by NPR as saying,"I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt, and I claim that right,", all I can think is that Hitchens and his ilk are nothing but a bunch of schoolyard bullies.

Vote with your feet. Please.

2009-10-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Pope has invited entire Anglican congregations to defect en masse to the Catholic Church. As the journalist for above linked the Christian Science Monitor article puts it, "it could...result in hundreds of thousands of churchgoers unhappy with openly gay and female clerics defecting to Rome."

Personally, if I were an Anglican (which I am not), my reaction to those who wanted to defect would be, don't let the door hit you on your way out. It is clear to me as I look at the Anglican communion from the outside that reactionaries have served as a major stumbling block to progressive change, as leading Anglicans have struggled to somehow make everyone happy (as if that were possible); so if those same reactionaries want to leave in favor of a church whose leadership proudly proclaims its homophobia and its misogyny, I say more power to them. I think there is something to be said for people voting with their feet; this allows the denominations to sort themselves out theologically and allows progressives to move forward without having to accommodate obstructionists who are stuck in the dark ages. As John Shelby Spong expressed it in his manifesto, talking to such people is pointless anyway.

In fact, I see that with regard to the upcoming ballot initiative in Maine that seeks to overturn legislation enabling same sex marriages, the Catholic diocese of Portland, Maine is one of the top three contributors of this campaign:

Yes On One/Stand for Marriage is relying on several large organizations to provide most of its funding: the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage, already under scrutiny by the Maine Ethics Commission for the source of its donations, has contributed more than $500,000 to the campaign so far; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has given more than $300,000 and Colorado-based Focus on the Family has raised about $90,000.

In this light we can view the fight against same-sex marriage as a kind of recruiting tool for the Catholic Church. But I would argue that religious debates should not be about popularity contests, where the denomination with the most adherents "wins". It should instead be about what is right and what is just. And in this battle, the Catholic Church stands on the wrong side of history.

Robert Jensen on religion

2009-10-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

An interview with Robert Jensen, who has stirred up a fair amount of controversy within the Presbyterian church over his unorthodox views, can be heard on a podcast from the series "The God Complex".

I found this interview somewhat interesting from the get go simply because one of the moderators of the podcast series--and one of Jensen's interviewers in the podcast--is the pastor of a church that I blogged about a while ago when I noted a seeming incongruity between statements on the church web site ostensibly promoting diversity and other statements on the same site that provided a list of very orthodox statements describing what "we"--the church--believed. In any case, the interview was respectful and friendly and gave Jensen an opportunity to discuss his own values and theology and his own non-dogmatic take on what he thinks church community is about.

Here are a couple of great quotes from the interview. First this one:

I hadn't bothered to pay attention to the range of thinking in Christianity, and for that matter in other faiths as well (Islam, Buddhism, others). So I started a kind of education that exposed me to a wider range of thinking. Like a lot of people I think I had always rejected organized religion because I assumed the only way you could find a place in a Christian church today was to accept what I just generally call the supernatural claims, the idea of God as a distinct entity or force or being out in the world that directs our lives; and the idea that the resurrection must be understood literally as a historical fact. I assumed that to be Christian was to accept those two fundamental supernatural claims, and what I realized as I started to read more progressive theology and look at the range, not even today, but historically going back actually to the beginnings of Christianity--I realized there were people who had always had a range of ideas, and that I could in fact find a place in that tradition.

And then this one:

I think in a funny way the New Atheists and the traditional fundamentalist Christians...kind of have a field day with each other, and they love to argue with each other. And I think the reason is because both of them share an essential assumption, that the only way you can be religious, the only way you can be a Christian, is to--without question--accept those supernatural claims and a set of dogmas that come with it. Now the fundamentalists believe that, and the New Atheists believe that as well. So I've had a number of discussions with people who would subscribe to the kind of New Atheist philosophy, and when I talk about my own questions, my own theology, and talk about it in the context of a progressive Christianity, they always say the same thing; they look at me and they say, "Well, you're not a real Christian." And I always say, "Well tell me what a 'real' Christian is," as if, in a 2000 year history, one can...nail down this easy definition of what it means to be a Christian.

Crumb does Genesis

2009-10-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

R. Crumb has illustrated the book of Genesis. This might just be worth checking out.

John Shelby Spong's manifesto

2009-10-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

John Shelby Spong is tired of debating with those in the Christian church who condemn homosexuality. I have to admit that there is something to be said for declaring victory and going home. Anyway, here is his manifesto (and in case that link no longer works, extracts of the manifesto are presented by Ruth Gledhill of the Times Online web site):

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured." Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding, pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.
I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.
In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.
I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.
I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.
I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.
The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.
I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.
Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.
This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

Social justice and interfaith dialogue

2009-10-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon a blog on a web site focused on Jewish issues in which Michael Rosen, a progressive Jewish author, describes his frustrating experiences in attempting to promote his recent book to progressive Christian audiences. He writes that he encountered a resistance by Christians who are interested in social justice issues--whom he assumed would be a natural audience for the story he tells in his book:

I figured that our story- a White couple with two White sons in New York City meeting five disadvantaged Black and Latino teenage boys on a blacktop baseball field, welcoming the boys into our home and also becoming our sons, then the story of navigating the whole ship of boys to safe harbor - would naturally to be of interest to religion-based groups dedicated to the Biblical call to social justice.

Instead, it seemed that the Christians he encountered were hesitant about inviting him into their own politically focused religious communities. He felt it was as if they were a bit too involved with the orthodoxy of their own faith to want to link up with someone of a different faith, despite a common cause of social justice. He thought--perhaps naively--that Matthew 25 would serve as an inspiration for Christians to put aside theological differences when the real thing was whether you fed the poor or took in the stranger. (Among those Christian social justice groups who he felt spurned him was Sojourners magazine.)

I can't help but wonder if part of the problem he faced was in mistaking a commitment to social justice with being uninterested in orthodoxy. What isn't always obvious is how vague and confusing the term "progressive Christian" can really be. For some, it means being theologically orthodox but politically progressive. For others, it isn't necessarily focused on politics but instead means being theologically progressive in the sense of embracing religious pluralism, not taking the bible or its miracle stories literally, and perhaps embracing a theology such as process theology or panentheism (groups from that category do tend to be interested in social justice as well, however.) And for still others it means focusing almost entirely on orthopraxis as the basis of the faith and denying that anything can really be said about God.

I can't speak to Sojourners specifically, about which I don't know a lot, but my guess is that it falls a little more closely into the "theologically orthodox but politically progressive" category. On other other hand, if you take a look at an someone like Jim Burklo, a Presbyterian pastor who has been involved intimately in the Center for Progressive Christianity, he appears to be all about orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, and I'd be willing to guess he would embrace what Rosen is doing (at a church he used to pastor, the web site said that they were about the "deeds rather than the creeds".) I similarly know of a Lutheran pastor in the city where I live, San Francisco, who is very much involved with both progressive Christianity and interfaith dialogue. And so on.

I guess the point is that it does get complicated and one might suggest that Michael Rosen was just talking to the wrong "progressive" or "social justice" Christians. It is also possible that many social justice Christians will always be hesitant about joining forces with religious communities outside the Christian orbit.

Opulence, simplicity, and the problem of world poverty

2009-10-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a hilarious video by Sarah Silverman (which one should not watch if one is offended by certain kinds of language):

The video reminds of this satirical piece from the Onion with the headline that reads, "Heaven Less Opulent Than Vatican, Reports Disappointed Pope", which includes this text describing John Paul II's reaction to the afterlife:

According to the pope, heaven is merely a place of unending peace and happiness, wherein all the spirits of the Elect live together forever in perfect harmony and goodness, basking in the rays of God's divine love.

"Up here, everyone is equal," John Paul II said. "No one has to go through an elaborate bowing ritual when they greet me. And do you know how many times my ring has been kissed since I arrived? None. Up here, I'm mingling with tax collectors, fishermen, and whores. It's just going to take a little getting used to, is all."

Sure, we all know that the Vatican wouldn't really solve the problem of world poverty by selling its assets. Sarah Silverman is a comedian, after all, not an economist, and her video was a work of comedy.

In a way, though, her satirical piece does strike a chord, at least with me, because I think it does address the question of what it means for any religious institution to own a trove of valuable or even priceless works of art and architecture, or what it means for the leadership of a church to live among such treasures. Although I am a lapsed Quaker, I find that many Quaker values are still a part of who I am. The Wikipedia article on the Quaker Testimony of Simplicity describes the many facets of this testimony, one of which is described as follows:

Like many aspects of Quaker life, the practice of plainness has evolved over time, although it is based on principles that have been a lasting part of Quaker thought. These principles now form part of the Quaker testimonies. Plainness is an extension of the testimony of simplicity and can still be observed today among modern Friends who do not follow fashion trends or purchase extravagant clothing. Simplicity to Friends has generally been a reference to material possessions (see plainness above). Friends traditionally limited their possessions to what they needed to live their lives, rather than pursuing luxuries. Recently this testimony is often taken to have an ecological dimension: that Friends should not use more than their fair share of the Earth's resources.

This testimony is largely responsible for the tradition of plain walls and functional furniture in meetinghouses

The reasons for living a simple life are not because you believe you will magically solve all of the world's ills if you eschew a life of luxury. It really is more a matter of expressing one's self through one's lifestyle, with personal integrity and in a way that is consistent with one's values of equality and justice. It means internalizing the values of justice and then expressing them through how you live. The best testimony to Jesus's life and message are not those who expect others to kiss their ring, but rather those who hang out, as Jesus did, with the "tax collectors, fishermen, and whores."

What does it mean to say that God "creates"?

2009-10-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

An Old Testament scholar in the Netherlands has suggested that the opening line of Genesis has been generally mistranslated and that it actually does not say that God "created" the heaven and the earth (but rather that God "separated" an already existing heaven and earth) . The implication is that this passage serves as a biblical refutation of the doctrine of creatio ex nihio, since the this translation implies that the universe already existed in some form and that God worked with this existing universe rather than creating it out of nothing. I am not a scholar in such matters and I cannot comment on the accuracy of this claim about the translation, but several things leapt to my mind as I read the this news item in the UK daily the Telegraph.

The Religion Editor for the same newspaper, George Pitcher, responded in a followup article by correctly pointing out correctly that "just because Genesis is a myth doesn't mean it's untrue". He writes:

Genesis is a transcription of ancient Hebrew creation myth. Calling it a myth doesn’t mean it’s “untrue”; it means that its truth is contained in the timeless quest for understanding of transcendental things like God’s provenance over time and space, the mystery of why something exists in the universe rather than nothing, human responsibility for stewardship of the planet and the origins of life. But, sorry Creationists, it isn’t and was never intended to be a piece of reportage about the first week of the universe. And, sorry secularists, a mistranslated Hebraic word doesn’t mean there is no God.

That's all well and good, but I also think that the we should consider the possibility that believing that God necessarily created the universe out of nothing reflects a bias about what God's nature necessarily must be. There is an assumption that some have that God must be by definition independent of the world and that the universe had to have been created out of nothing by an all powerful deity. However, as the process theologians conceive of God, neither God nor the world can be comprehended independently of one another.

There is thus no need under process theology to posit a doctrine of creation out of nothing. In fact, process theology views divine creativity not as a coercive act of forcing something into existence, but rather a collaborative act between God and the world. Thus God is not so much the "Creator" as the chief co-creator of the world, or perhaps it is better to say chief co-creator with the world. Without God, under this view, there could be no true creativity because God plays a central role as the source of novelty in the creative process, but similarly there could not be creativity unless the world also actively participated in that same creative process.

I think there are a lot of problems with the doctrine of divine omnipotence, and it seems to me that it would be useful to jettison the doctrine of creation out of nothing once and for all. As a creation myth, the first chapter of Genesis serves as an interesting starting point for discussion among monotheists in the Western tradition. But I don't think that an entire theology should base itself on the accuracy of a translation of a single sentence written thousands of years ago.

Quote of the Day

2009-10-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

From John Shuck's blog:

I am a heretic. My theology is crap. I don't know one thing about God. I don't know anything about rationality or reason or the divine spectacle of revelation or whatever. I don't know much about the Bible and I don't even care about it that much.

I am OK with that. Because the people I am increasingly coming in contact with in the church have fancy theology but then tell lies about other human beings.

If your Bible and your God can't help you tell the truth about your neighbor and treat her with justice then I want nothing to do with your Bible or your God.

You can have it all, my friend, the Bible, theology, John Calvin ...God for that matter.

I'll take human decency.

Father Damien and Canonization

2009-10-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

Yet another saint is about to be canonized by the Catholic Church--this time, Father Damien of Hawaii. I have no doubt that he did wonderful acts of service with those affected by leprosy or other diseases, so I don't have a problem with publicly recognizing his, or anyone else's, service to humanity. What I do object to is the criterion of "verified" miracles that the Catholic Church uses as a prerequisite for sainthood, and I find it objectionable on several levels.

First, the idea that service to humanity is not enough to garner recognition--that you also have to have been a heavenly magician as well--trivializes the importance of loving service and makes a mockery of what our respect for saintly people should be about. Second, it relies on a pre-modern theology of divine interventionism that makes no sense in the modern world. Third, the idea that these miracles take place after the saint's death as a "proof" that they are now in heaven really represents a a case of theological hubris in which pronouncements about individuals' fate after death are claimed. Fourth, the supposedly "verified" nature of these miracles are nothing of the sort; no verification by the Vatican or approval by the Pope would pass any empirical or scientific test for verifiability; thus the usage "verified" is really a misnomer. It simply means that the Vatican "investigated" the claims of miracles and decided to give their approval to them.

In fact, when we talk about "verifying" miracles, we are generally describing events such as medical healings that are unverifiable, which is precisely what makes them serve so conveniently as fodder for miracle claims. We simply lack the capability of observing in detail all the processes that take place in the human body down to the molecular level. Since we can't really observe what takes place there, if someone gets better from an illness or condition contrary to expectations, then the expectations themselves form the basis of the miracle claim. What it is that God or the saint supposedly did at the molecular level to effect the healing is impossible to say, impossible to verify--what switch did God flip, what cancer cells did God kill, what bacteria did God eliminate?--and therefore ultimately the attribution of a miracle is nothing more than a case of hopeful thinking. There is no "verification" involved at all. Human bodies are not deterministic machines and are subject to the chaos of uncertainty and probability. This is simply another case of the God of the Gaps rearing its ugly head.

This is related in general to the various moral and theological problems that exist with the concept of intercessory prayer. When people claim that intercessory prayer "works" when they pray for a sick loved one to get better, they are really just engaging in wishful thinking as they project their hopes onto the God of the Gaps. There are no millions of tiny little cameras in the human body that can record what is happening to every single cell and the atom, so if someone gets better, it is easy enough to assert that it is because others prayed for God (or some saint) to intervene. All the people we prayed for who didn't get better--well, that was just God saying "no". And for the people who were unlucky enough to have no Christian friends to pray for them--well, that's too bad. The moral implications of an interventionist God (or his lieutenants) who works behind the scenes to effect "miraculous" healings on some people but not others defies logic and moral sense.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--the real miracle is found every time someone loves another and expresses that love through service and compassion. The saints are those who carry out these acts of love throughout their life. If there is an afterlife and saints are to be found there, so be it, but I see no use in speculation about such matters, let alone making definitive pronouncements from on high. And as for the alleged miracles, it is my contention that magical tricks are the stuff of medieval theology and have no place in serious theology.

Scientism and Religious Literalism

2009-10-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

I don't make a practice of reading atheist blogger Jerry Coyne's sneering attacks against religion, but sometimes I do web searches of blogs for references to theologians who interest me, and his blog unfortunately sometimes comes up. When I peek at his blog, I find it to be a fascinating case study in denial, since he seems to understand at some level that his generalizations about religion are clearly undercut by counterexamples that he must then vigorously belittle and attack. Interestingly, part of his strategy of asserting that theologies that don't conform to his counterexamples are irrelevant is by dismissing certain individuals as "academic" theologians--a strange insult indeed considering that it comes from someone who himself is an academic. He recently wrote this just the other day in his blog:

how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

Sarcasm is thus for Coyne what passes for serious dialogue about these issues. The need to dismiss such theologians in this way is clear. There are clearly many theologians whose conceptions of God don't correspond to the kind of deity that the entire militant atheist critique of religion per se rests upon. But if one makes a sweeping generalization about the inherent nature of religion, then counterexamples which contradict such a universal characterization clearly pose a huge problem since they render the generalization patently false.

In other words, if you can't pretend that John Haught or process theologians don't exist--deligitimize them, and pretend that somehow even though they exist as counterexamples, they don't really count! (The fact that such authors actually sell books outside of academia and are actually read and followed by lay people of faith is a bit inconvenient, but there you have it.) This is a variant of the "most people" argument--the idea that the mythical "most people" get to decide what is and isn't legitimately religious.

Coyne attacks the poetic language of myth and meaning that is found among the theologians he dismisses, and I would suggest that this is a symptom of a certain kind of mindset that seeks to apply literalism to everything in life--an unfortunate symptom of the scientism that he embraces. We saw this in Dawkins, who was quoted as objecting to teaching children stories that involved fantasy. This is where I stand apart from both the scientism of Dawkins and Coyne and from those who embrace religious myths literally. Both mindsets embrace literalism in different ways--scientism detests mythic language because it doesn't conform to the literalist mindset, and religious literalism embraces mythic language as if it were literal truth because not to do so would deny the literalist mindset. In other words, both scientism and religious literalism are twin sides of the same literalist coin.

Scientists like Coyne who think that everything must be an expression of empirical truth and who lack the poetic imagination to see things in other ways ultimately have to end up concluding that many expressions of philosophical and poetic inquiry, when ripped out of context, are merely "fatuous lucubrations", as he describes it in his blog. My guess is that Coyne would probably say the same things about Kant or Wittgenstein that he says about Karen Armstrong, since philosophers also frequently use language that lies beyond the rigid and literal empiricism that Coyne seems to think applies to everything in the universe, and when taken out of context the words of the great Western philosophers could be as easily mocked by people like Coyne as the words of progressive Christian theologians are.

Some of this may just be a matter of personality--some people get it, and others do not. The problem lies in that some of those who don't get it make a career out of attacking those who do, and then end up looking like fools in the process.

Karen Armstrong and the purpose of religious faith

2009-10-06T08:50:00.001-07:00

I have mixed feelings about Karen Armstrong. In theory, I like a lot of what she has to say about God and religion, and in fact I have borrowed her concept of "freelance monotheism" and adopted it as my own. On the other hand, both times I tried to read one of her books, I ended up hating them. I find her interesting as a speaker; as an author, not so much.

For that reason, I have not read her latest book, The Case for God, but at the same time I was curious what Ross Douthats had to say about it in his New York Times book review , which appeared last Sunday.

Douthat writes

Karen Armstrong, a former nun turned prolific popular historian, wants to rescue the idea of God from its cultured despisers and its more literal-minded adherents alike. To that end, she doesn’t just argue that her preferred approach to religion — which emphasizes the pursuit of an unknowable Deity, rather than the quest for theological correctness — is compatible with a liberal, scientific, technologically advanced society. She argues that it’s actually truer to the ancient traditions of Judaism, Islam and (especially) Christianity than is much of what currently passes for “conservative” religion. And the neglect of these traditions, she suggests, is “one of the reasons why so many Western people find the concept of God so troublesome today.”

Douthat disputes this latter claim, arguing that early Christianity was actually quite dogmatic in the claims that it made about God's nature. I think that Douthat has a point in this criticism. It is true that fundamentalism is largely a modern phenomenon, a reaction to modernism and science--this is a point that Marcus Borg has made repeatedly. In particular, Biblical literalism as we know it today is largely a modern phenomenon. However, one should not confuse fundamentalism with orthodoxy. The insistence on the right to make absolute claims about theology and to impose that theology on others has a long and sorry tradition that goes way back to the days of the Nicene Creed and earlier. When Nicene Christians were imposing Trinitarian doctrine on the faith as a whole and suppressing dissenting views, they were claiming that something about God is quite knowable, quite particular and quite abstruse.

So on that score, I think that Douthat makes a valid point. However, it is when he moves beyond a factual crique of Armstrong's book and starts making theological arguments that his review falls flat. Douthat characterizes liberal religion as "parasitic on more dogmatic forms of faith, which create and sustain the practices that the liberal believer picks and chooses from, reads symbolically and reinterprets for a more enlightened age." This is utter nonsense. Like so many apologists for orthodoxy, Douthout characterizes religious dogmatism as essentially the only legitimate expression of faith. He claims that the "sturdy appeal of Western monotheism" lies not just in "myth and ritual and symbolism...but also scandalously literal claims — that the Jews really are God’s chosen people; that Christ really did rise from the dead; and that however much the author of the universe may surpass our understanding, we can live in hope that he loves the world enough to save it, and us, from the annihilating power of death." In other words, according to Douthat, religion is only useful if it makes absolutist and fantastical assertions about events in the real world.

This is, of course, what militant atheists believe to be the essence of religion, and it lies at the heart of their critique. But if that is what religion is really all about, then the militant atheists have won the argument, because there is no way of reconciling such claims about the world with a modern and rational sensibility.

Douthat unfortunately justifies his position by using the old canard, the "most people" argument. "Most people", Douthat argues, "are hungry for myths that are not only resonant but true." Douthat misses the point here the "truth" of a myth does not lie in being a literal description of a historical event, as any student of myth will tell you. "Emmaus never happened; Emmaus always happens", as Dominic Crossan points out. More importantly, religion is not a matter of majority vote. Even if Douthat really has an accurate reading of what "most" people supposedly want, the point is irrelevant. Douthat no more speaks for everyone than Armstrong does. (The funny thing about religious dogmatism is the lack of unanimity among those dogmatists who proclaim the certainty of their own pet belief system. Dogmatism is good, we are told--but of course, my dogmatism is right and yours is wrong. How this serves as an argument for the absolute knowability of God is anyone's guess)

Contrary to Douthat, I think that the varieties of religious faith suggest that these claims about the real world that religions often make might just be secondary to the human needs that religion addresses--and that ultimately it is the myths and the meaning and the pointing of ourselves outward towards something greater and more ultimate that matter more than whether any of the claims that are made are literally true. Be that as it may, it isn't really germane to the discussion to posit what "most people" want out of religion. Religion is many things to many people, and one size doesn't fit all. The question is, what kind of religion works for those of us who seek a deeper meaning in the world and who see myths and traditions of a particular faith as a means of mediating the sacred, but who also reject a belief in irrational or fantastical claims? Such a religious faith is indeed possible, and Armstrong is one of the people who tries to address this possibility. People like Douthat just don't get a say in what everyone's religious faith is about.

The Bible and authority

2009-09-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

Blogger Wade G writes in his blog "Evolution of the Mystery":

The fact is, it is okay to just say that in certain respects the Bible can be wrong. Dead wrong, about facts and morals, and even world views. People can read into the Bible pretty much anything they want, but think of this: if someone could prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the Bible truly taught that women should be subordinate would that make it true? Of course not. It would mean that the Bible was WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. Why is that so hard for folk to understand? The Bible is here for us - we are not here to serve the Bible.

I think he is right, of course, and I do think that even among liberal Christians there is sometimes a tendency to approach the Bible with a kind of reverence or to assign it a kind of authority that I don't think it necessarily deserves. I believe that the word "authority" is problematic in this case; if the Bible is clearly wrong about some things, and if we are honest with ourselves in accepting this, then it is hard to see whence comes this authority.

Some Christians try to balance out the Bible as an authority with other sources; for example, there is the Wesleyan quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. But I think this view still assigns a kind of authority to the Bible, and I look at this issue from a different angle. The value of the Bible as I see it lies not in its absolute "rightness" but rather in that it gives us a record of the kinds of issues that people struggled with in certain formative periods of Judaism and Christianity--and, despite its flaws, it also contains some inspirational literature to boot. An analogy I would make is with philosophers who study Plato; they do this, not because Plato was right about everything, but because he was a foundational figure in Western philosopher who touched on nearly all the issues that philosophy has struggled with ever since. Similarly, the Bible touched on virtually all the important issues that monotheistic Western faith has grappled with ever since.

The Bible is a starting point, not an end point. It is instructive for not just the things it got right, but for the things it got wrong as well. Part of the process of discovery is learning from past mistakes, and if religion is a journey towards the mystery, then part of understanding the journey is knowing where we made some wrong turns.

Spong on what it means to be a Christian

2009-09-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

John Shelby Spong regularly sends out emails of answers that he offers to various questions. I am not on the email list, but occasionally I find that some of his email posts do make their way into various blogs. Here is one that I like, because first of all it responds to the claim that I often hear that liberal Christianity "redefines" or "waters down" the definition of what it means to be a Christian--which I think is categorically untrue--and secondly because it refutes what I think is a misconception about orthodoxy--namely a belief that the history of Christian theology has proceeded in a straight line from Jesus and the apostles directly to later orthodoxy, with any competing theologies merely coming into the faith as interlopers without any basis to be found in the origins of the faith, being somehow contrary to this one true theology that was essentially there, at least in its roots, from the beginning.

On the contrary, it seems clear to me that the seeds of Christianity could have evolved in many different ways from what was early on a diverse faith, with one set of beliefs emerging as the victor in a series of disputes, then calling itself "orthodox" and labeling the losing sides "heresy"and doing the best it could to stamp out those losing opinions.

What I find also find interesting about Spong's post is that he argues that it is worth it for those who the orthodoxy tries to marginalize and exclude from the faith to stay within the Christian community in order to have a say in its future, rather than to give up and just walk away. I admire the spirit behind this sentiment, even if I myself feel more comfortable hovering near or even outside the margins of Christianity.

Here is Spong's post:

Karen Hutton from Pleasantville, California, writes:

Is there any purpose in staying a member of a traditional Christian Church if you no longer believe the things the church regards as its core beliefs? Why have you stayed with your church, given your criticisms of many of the basic aspects of Christianity?

Dear Karen,

Before answering that question, we need to identify what it is you are calling "core beliefs" or the "basic aspects of Christianity." I believe that what most people call orthodoxy in religious beliefs is little more than the imposed authority of some part of the Christian faith. The claim to be orthodox in one's belief is not to acknowledge a point of view that is true, but only the point of view that has prevailed. My studies lead me to believe that there never was a single consistent set of Christian beliefs. There were many Christianities from the dawn of Christianity itself. Various groups have tried to define true Christianity, but when they do they almost always define their own institutional, authoritarian system.

Some people, for example, assert that the historic creeds defined primitive Christianity. The Apostles' Creed, however, began as a series of baptismal formulas in local churches in the third century and these formulas differed widely until they evolved into a single form somewhere between 250 and 290 CE. I doubt if the actual apostles would have recognized much of it.

The Nicene Creed, adopted at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, was designed primarily to close the loopholes in the Apostles' Creed. The Athanasian Creed, a product of the late fourth century, was designed to close loopholes in the Nicene Creed. The earliest creed of the Church was only three words, Jesus is Messiah. The word "messiah" meant a variety of things to the Jews, so even the three-word creed had wide flexibility.

Others assert that believing in the Virgin Birth is a "core doctrine" of Christianity, but scholars can now demonstrate quite conclusively that both Paul and Mark seem never to have heard of it; and John, who was among the last writers in the New Testament, appears to have specifically rejected it since he refers to Jesus on two occasions as the "son of Joseph."

Still others suggest that the physical resurrection of Jesus is the essential core belief of Christianity, but I think I can demonstrate that Paul did not believe the resurrection was physical, and neither did Mark. Matthew is ambivalent. It is Luke and John, the last two gospels to be written, that interpret the resurrection as a physical resuscitation of a deceased body. So determining what the "core beliefs" of Christianity are is not as easy as people seem to think.

Some, usually in evangelical or in the conservative Catholic traditions, argue that doctrines like the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Trinity set the boundaries around essential Christianity, but once again these doctrines were not fully developed until the third and fourth centuries and it would be difficult to demonstrate that either Paul or Mark were Trinitarians.

My point is that Christianity has always been a movement and that most churches have simply frozen Christianity at fairly primitive levels. It is not to oppose basic Christianity that is the agenda of Christian scholars; it is to seek truth through the Christian story or through the Christian lens. That is what keeps me active in church life. Christianity is not static or doctrinal. It is a pathway we walk into the mystery of God. I grant that it is easier to walk the Christ path in some churches than in others, but true Christianity is always evolving into what it can be; its purpose is not to protect what it has been. So I would suggest that for you to see your role in your church to be that of a change agent, you are in fact being a true worshiper of Christ.

I hope this helps. I think institutional Christianity needs people like you and me in it.

– John Shelby Spong

The confines of Christian faith

2009-08-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

I ran across a blogger (who does not allow comments in his blog) who criticizes John Shelby Spong from the perspective of a former Christian who left the faith a long time ago and "never looked back". Spong is a difficult person for me to write about because I have mixed feelings about him, as I've described elsewhere. Overall, despite my misgivings, he does get my qualified support for what I think he is trying to accomplish, which among other things is to try to show those people who are spiritually inclined but otherwise alienated from Christian orthodoxy that it might not be necessary for them to live in exile from Christianity. Since I feel mostly in exile myself, I'm not sure that I feel confident in the ultimate success of that project, but I still think it is a project that is worth the effort.

The blogger who criticized Spong is an example of one of those people who made the transition from what Marcus Borg calls "pre-critical naivete" to "critical thinking" but who never made it to the next step of "post-critical naivete", and as a result maintains a rather simplistic definition of what Christianity entails. He doesn't see Spong's theology as fitting into his own stereotype of what he thinks Christianity necessarily must be. Like a lot of people in that category, he goes further than that, arguing essentially that all intelligent people should view religion the same way that he does. In that sense, he certainly shares Spong's own unfortunate dogmatic tendencies. In fact, in critiquing a paradigm that doesn't fit into his own, he ultimately criticizes Spong's own intellectual honesty, accusing Spong of having to resolve the sort of cognitive dissonance that as a former bishop he somehow must be experiencing--that is to say, as one who sees the Bible as having flaws but whose lifetime of service to the church requires him to desperately cling to a Christian identity that he can't possibly really agree with at same deeper level of his being.

The blogger, thus, exemplifies what I have talked about before--the former Christian who changes teams without changing their basic assumptions about what Christianity necessarily means. More importantly, we see the assumption that this narrow definition of what Christianity entails must also be imposed on progressive Christians as well. Somehow all these progressive Christians don't actually know what it is they really believe, apparently. The blogger writes,

Consider Spong’s predicament: he is now a retired bishop, who spent his entire career in the service of the Episcopal Church. Like many of us, he is too intelligent to believe that the Bible is literally true. But, because of his position in life, he feels obligated to not reject the Bible outright, so he ends up wrapping himself around the axle of his own justifications.

The blogger also assumes that all Christians must necessarily believe in the exclusive nature of their own faith--that their faith is the only legitimate way. If there are other ways of being spiritual or of loving or of focusing on an ultimate higher purpose, then (the assumption goes), there is no point in being a Christian. The blogger writes,

But one need not be a Christian to do this. The Christian filter is strictly optional. There are a multitude of ways to approach spirituality, and Christianity is but one. Once a person admits the possibility that Christianity isn’t the “One True” religion, and that the Bible isn’t the inerrant “Word of God,” the whole edifice starts to crumble. And as millions of ex-Christians have found, once we’re free from the confines of Christian Faith, we don’t miss it at all.

My guess is that Spong would agree that there are a "multitude of ways to approach spirituality, and Christianity is but one." Certainly Marcus Borg agrees with that, as do many other progressive Christians, theologians and lay people alike. So of course by asserting that there are many paths to spiritual fulfillment, the blogger is not saying anything we don't already know. The fact that one chooses a means of mediating the sacred may be nothing more than that particular means speaks to one's own inner self in ways that others do not. And I think this is the key point here. When the blogger says that "we don't miss [Christianity] at all", the blogger is speaking for himself but then generalizing on behalf of others. This is the "I know what's best for everyone else" response. I would agree that not everyone is cut out to be religious, or a Christian. But the blogger cannot speak for everyone. And it is certainly not true that "the whole edifice starts to crumble" if you reject exclusivist claims for a particular faith. On the contrary, once we move beyond exclusivist claims, a religion is not defining limiting "confines" but instead celebrates the liberation of the human spirit through a spiritual journey--and that is a much stronger foundation upon which to build a Christian faith, in my opinion.

God without certainty

2009-08-27T09:24:00.001-07:00

I recently got into a discussion in James McGrath's blog with a Buddhist who asked me what the point of theistic religion is if it doesn't entail receiving clearly defined messages from God. He saw his own nontheistic religion as a scientific and empircally valid form of psychology, and for him any religion--especially one involving God--that is non-empircal or riddled with ambiguity and uncertainty is pointless. This discussion illustrated, I think, a common misconception about what religion necessarily means for everyone. Those who don't get progressive religion are often baffled by the idea of a faith that isn't about dogma or certainty. This is certainly the assumption of a lot of fundamentalist Christians, for whom certainty and dogma are central. But I have found that a lot of atheists also share the same assumption. Many of them think that there is no point in positing a God if that God doesn't give us obvious and unambiguous instructions, apparently accompanied by lightning bolts and spoken with a booming voice from the sky.

For others of us, however, religion is not about having answers handed to us on a silver platter, but rather about the mystery and the journey of discovery. It is about myth, meaning, and community. For us, to ask what is the point of belief in God without certainty is like asking what is the point of a poem. This is something that some people just don't get, and, unfortunately, such people often seem to spend a lot of energy trying to insist that the rest of us see things their own way.

That's great, but what about process theology?

2009-08-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

I sometimes feel like a broken record when I complain about authors on religious topics who ignore process theology, but it after reading Robert Wright's column in today's New York Times about how to reconcile faith in God with evolution, I once again found myself thinking, "That's great, but what about process theology?" One of the reasons I find process theology intriguing is that it addresses two theological questions that I think have to be resolved if belief in God is to be tenable: how to reconcile science and religion, and how to reconcile the existence of God with the problem of evil. Thus whenever an author gives an ostensibly comprehensive analysis on either of those two subjects for public consumption, and yet in so doing ignores process theology altogether, then I find myself objecting that the treatment of the subject matter is really incomplete.

Wright argues in his column that the only way for believers in God to also believe in evolution is to subscribe to a kind of deistic biology, in which God created the mechanism of natural selection and then subsequently just sat back and watched:

The first step toward this more modern theology is for them to bite the bullet and accept that God did his work remotely — that his role in the creative process ended when he unleashed the algorithm of natural selection (whether by dropping it into the primordial ooze or writing its eventual emergence into the initial conditions of the universe or whatever).

This isn't much different from other kinds of deism, and while it is true that this would indeed be one solution to the problem, another possible solution he doesn't mention and yet which is offered by process theology, suggests that God is actively involved in all the processes of the world (including biological evolution), but not in a coercive fashion but rather as One who offers creative possibilities at each moment. God under this model is then a non-omnipotent co-creator with creation itself. Thus, unlike the deistic evolution that Wright proposes, process theology sees God as remaining active--but not in an omnipotent sense.

I am certainly not saying that anyone, including Robert Wright, has to accept process theology. I do think it is frustrating, though, when process theology gets short shrift in an area of theology that it is specifically suited to address, and thus a treatment of a subject like this is not as comprehensive as it sets out to be.

It is also notable in this case that Wright goes on to say in his column that "organisms must come from a different creative process than rocks" and that " this creative process imparts a purpose (however mundane) to organisms." The idea that there are two different creative processes at work in the universe involves a kind of dualism that some might find a bit unsatisfying at some level, and he takes this dualism for granted when in fact it is not philosophically necessary. Indeed, this kind of dualism in the creative processes is something that process theology also rejects, seeing ultimately the same Divine creativity at work throughout all the processes of the universe.

Interfaith dialogue--or not, as the case may be

2009-08-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

Many Jews are understandably outraged at a document produced by US Catholic bishops:

Jewish groups said they interpret the new document to mean that the bishops view interfaith dialogue as a chance to invite Jews to become Catholic. The Jewish leaders said they "pose no objection" to Christians sharing their faith, but said dialogue with Jews becomes "untenable" if the goal is to persuade Jews to accept Christ as their savior.

I read the document in question , and I simply can't comprehend that its authors wouldn't know that it uses language that is patently offensive to Jews. For example, here is a quote from the document: "this line of reasoning could lead some to conclude mistakenly that Jews have an obligation not to become Christian and that the Church has a corresponding obligation not to baptize Jews."

Genuine ecumenical dialogue is mutually respectful; it does not try to proselytize. More importantly, given historical circumstances, Jews have a particular reason for being sensitive about efforts to convert them to Christianity. The Catholic Church clearly doesn't get it.

Changing teams

2009-08-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

On reading a post in the blog "Debunking Christianity", authored by a former Christian named John Loftus who is now an atheist, I was struck by the fact that, except for a few changes of wording here and there, the entry could have been posted in a fundamentalist blog. It illustrates the point that I've seen time and time again, that a lot of former Christians-turned-atheist have changed teams without changing a lot of their assumptions about the nature of Christianity. It's the same fundamentalist mindset--just the team has changed.

For example, Loftus writes in his blog that "liberal Christians"

should just acknowledge that and admit they have cut themselves off from any historic understanding of what defines a Christian

I always find it interesting when atheists claim the right to decide who is and is not a Christian.

Rowan Williams and human liberation

2009-08-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Some people in the past have defended Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by suggesting that on the subject of sexuality he is caught between the disparate factions of the church, and that his response to the Episcopal Church's moves towards greater equality for gays and lesbians is nothing more than the actions of an impartial referee who is trying to keep the church from falling apart.

Pronouncements that Williams has made make it clear that nothing could be farther from the truth. Far from being an impartial referee, Williams has revealed an underlying allegiance with the conservatives. Among other things, Williams stated regarding same-sex marriage that

a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires. (emphasis added).

His reference to "their chosen lifestyle" is telling.

It is also interesting to see what Williams's view on the role of the church with respect to human liberation and social progress is:

if the Church has echoed the harshness of the law and of popular bigotry – as it so often has done – and justified itself by pointing to what society took for granted, it has been wrong to do so. But on the same basis, if society changes its attitudes, that change does not of itself count as a reason for the Church to change its discipline.

In other words, according to Williams, if society is more progressive than the church, if society develops a liberating impulse ahead of the church, if the church lags behind society, then that is not the church's problem! I have a very different idea; I think that religious faith should be at the forefront of human liberation and social progress. I am reminded of John Woolman, the eighteenth century American Quaker who, inspired by his religious faith, fought a lifelong struggle to oppose slavery. Woolman understood what Williams does not, that faith can and should be a driving impulse to support justice and inclusion. Williams places institutional inertia over these most important of human values. I want no part of Rowan Williams's religion.

Francis Collins and science

2009-08-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

There has been a brouhaha in the blogosphere over the appointment of Francis Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health. Many militant atheists have complained that Collins, who is a Christian, should not be given such an eminent scientific post, because he is an avid proselytizer for the belief in the harmony of science and faith (he even has a website on the subject). You can predict who the most vocal complainers are--people like PZ Myers and Sam Harris, for example--and their complaints can be taken with the usual mountains of salt. In fact, Andrew Brown of the UK Guardian newspaper began his commentary on this controversy with a scathing critique of Sam Harris:

Anyone tempted to believe that the abolition of religion would make the world a wiser and better place should study the works of Sam Harris. Shallow, narrow, and self-righteous, he defends and embodies all of the traits that have made organised religion repulsive; and he does so in the name of atheism and rationality. He has, for example, defended torture, ("restraint in the use of torture cannot be reconciled with our willingness to wage war in the first place") attacked religious toleration in ways that would make Pio Nono blush: "We can no more tolerate a diversity of religious beliefs than a diversity of beliefs about epidemiology and basic hygiene" ; he has claimed that there are some ideas so terrible that we may be justified in killing people just for believing them. Naturally, he also believes that the Nazis were really mere catspaws of the Christians. ("Knowingly or not, the Nazis were agents of religion").

There is no question that the bigotry of Myers and Harris play a clear role in their objections to Collins's appointment. And yet, my feelings on this subject are somewhat complicated by the fact that while I, like Collins, believe that science and faith can be compatible, I am not sure that I am in Collins's camp when he gets down to specifics. The reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that Collins has been described as an evangelical.

First and foremost, I should make it clear that I think that if Collins has shown himself to be a qualified scientist, then his religious beliefs should be irrelevant. The fact that he publicly states his views on religion should also be irrelevant, in my view. (The blogger who posts to the "Evolution is True" blog has actually complained about scientists "who insist on publicly harmonizing their faith with science"! Apparently, according to this objection, Christian scientists are supposed to keep their religious views as deep, dark secrets that they never reveal to the world.) I think that Collins's work as a scientist should be judged solely on its own merits alone, so these objections about his public expressions of faith strike me as ridiculous. If he is a qualified scientist, then he has earned the right to hold the job.

On the other hand, aside from his qualifications for the job, I also think that Collins poses a difficult problem if he is presented as some sort of spokesman for the harmony of science and religion. As I mentioned, I myself am a strong believer that science and faith can be compatible, to the extent that religious faith embraces a rationalist understanding of the world. Collins does believe in evolution--if he did not, he would certainly not be qualified for the job, since serious biology is impossible without an acceptance of evolution. The question is, how does Collins believe that God plays a role in evolution or other scientific processes? Collins spends an inordinate amount of time on his website trying to reconcile science with the mythological tales in Genesis, which I don't really see the point of. The Genesis stories were attempts by people with a primitive scientific understanding to understand the world and God's role in its creation. They are nice stories, and they provide interesting ideas into the human condition, but to assign them an authoritative role beyond that just complicates matters. It would be a lot easier if people just stopped trying to justify Geneis or trying "reconcile" Genesis with science; I think there is simply no need to do so. There is nothing to "reconcile" because Genesis is not science.

It also gets complicated when he tries to reconcile the idea of divine "Sovereignty" (that is to say, supernatural interventionism) with evolution. The problem here is that he gets rather vague on this subject. At one point, he clearly affirms the idea of an interventionist deity and at the same time seems to be taking the Deist position:

the creator can act outside the created physical laws. However, we must not say that miraculous events outside the laws of nature are the only instances of God’s involvement. For this reason, BioLogos requires no miraculous events in its account of God’s creative process, except for the origins of the natural laws guiding the process.

The first sentence of the above quote affirms the existence of miraculous events, but then the second sentence seems to come straight out of Deism. However, later in the same text, he then backs off of this seeming Deism completely and leans toward something somewhat closer to process theology, in which God is constantly involved in creation through "influence"; unlike process theology, however, he still affirms divine omnipotence, believing that God merely "allows" the world to exist in freedom outside of his/her control:

BioLogos does not seek a concept of a God who is involved at certain times and who only observes at other times. In harmony with theism, BioLogos affirms a God who is at all times involved, yet who still allows a degree of freedom to the creation....

It is thus perfectly possible that God might influence the creation in subtle ways that are unrecognizable to scientific observation.

I haven't studied Collins's views in great enough detail to know comprehensibly what he is arguing, but based on these statements it appears that he is suggesting that God a) created the world through omnipotent intervention; b) has influenced the world through a subtle, below-the-radar act of continuous influence; c) may get involved from time to time through more direct acts of intervention.

One of the reasons that I rejected the idea of a supernatural interventionist God is not just that it violates my understanding of a rational, orderly world, but also that it poses immense problems for theodicy; but of course the latter objection is a completely separate moral problem and isn't relevant to the question of how divine action could be consistent with science. Collins seems wedded to the idea of a supernaturally interventionist God, and this is where I part with him. I think it is important to recognize that there can be more than one potential way of reconciling faith and science, and Collins's approach is not the only one.

When fundamentalism serves a corporate agenda

2009-08-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

A New York Times review of a book on Wal-Mart provided a fascinating glimpse into the ways that a corporation can use fundamentalist Christian values to promote a corporate agenda that advances the bottom line through lower wages or other exploitative policies. The reviewer notes that

Anyone who has read Barbara Ehrenreich’s description of her experiences as a Wal-Mart clerk in “Nickel and Dimed” or Steven Greenhouse’s chronicle of Wal-Mart’s widespread flouting of safety and hours regulations in“The Big Squeeze” might well wonder why anyone would even consider a job with the company.

The answer, it seems, is that Wal-Mart appeals to fundamentalist Christian values. These values were particularly prominent in the Bible Belt region where the company was founded:

Sam Walton was not a fundamentalist Christian. He and his wife, Helen, worshipped at a liberal branch of the Presbyterian Church, and Mrs. Walton was even an early abortion rights advocate. But Moreton argues that Walton and his fellow executives quickly recognized the economic advantage of weaving specific strands of the Ozark region’s fundamentalist belief system into their corporate strategy.

At the heart of that strategy was the company’s emphasis on the Christian concept of “servant leadership.” In other parts of the retail sector, the servitude demanded of retail clerks was typically experienced as demeaning. But by repeatedly reminding employees that the Christian servant leader cherishes opportunities to provide cheerful service to others, Moreton argues, Wal-Mart transformed servitude from a negative job characteristic into a positive one.

Another cultural strand in Moreton’s account is the company’s policy of reproducing the social relationships characteristic of fundamentalist Christian households in the workplace. To this end, Wal-Mart needed a legal pretext for hiring mostly men as managers and mostly women as clerks. The solution was to move managers to new store locations frequently, a condition of employment that men would generally accept but most women would not.

But even though the managerial jobs paid better and offered more opportunities for promotion, there was still a problem for male employees. The highly regimented, rule-driven jobs at Wal-Mart were a pale substitute for the independent farmer’s role from which the company’s Ozark male managers had recently been driven. Rather than cede greater control to managers, Moreton argues, the company salved the egos of the men by celebrating a patriarchal ideal of “Christian manliness.” The women, for their part, were only too happy to adopt the prescribed submissive role.

"He is alive"

2009-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite movies of all time, and one of the best political thrillers ever made, is Z, directed by Costra-Gavras. The movie was nominated for the best picture Oscar for 1969, and won the Academy Award for best foreign language film.

The movie provides a fictionalized account of events in Greece after a peace activist was murdered in the early 1960s. The letter "Z" became a catchword in the film among those who wanted to continue his work after he died. It meant "He is alive".

When his followers expressed this sentiment, they clearly did not mean that he was literally still alive. They meant instead that they honored what he sought to accomplish, and that his spirit carried on in the work of those who came after him.

Perhaps this is similar to what the followers of a certain Jewish mystic 2000 years ago were also saying after he was killed for what he stood for.

John Haught on the resurrection

2009-07-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

From an interview in Salon.com:

What do you make of the miracles in the Bible -- most importantly, the Resurrection? Do you think that happened in the literal sense?

I don't think theology is being responsible if it ever takes anything with completely literal understanding. What we have in the New Testament is a story that's trying to awaken us to trust that our lives make sense, that in the end, everything works out for the best. In a pre-scientific age, this is done in a way in which unlettered and scientifically illiterate people can be challenged by this Resurrection. But if you ask me whether a scientific experiment could verify the Resurrection, I would say such an event is entirely too important to be subjected to a method which is devoid of all religious meaning.

So if a camera was at the Resurrection, it would have recorded nothing?

If you had a camera in the upper room when the disciples came together after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we would not see it. I'm not the only one to say this. Even conservative Catholic theologians say that. Faith means taking the risk of being vulnerable and opening your heart to that which is most important. We trivialize the whole meaning of the Resurrection when we start asking, Is it scientifically verifiable? Science is simply not equipped to deal with the dimensions of purposefulness, love, compassion, forgiveness -- all the feelings and experiences that accompanied the early community's belief that Jesus is still alive. Science is simply not equipped to deal with that. We have to learn to read the universe at different levels. That means we have to overcome literalism not just in the Christian or Jewish or Islamic interpretations of scripture but also in the scientific exploration of the universe. There are levels of depth in the cosmos that science simply cannot reach by itself.

Terry Eagleton on religion

2009-07-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

I found this great quote by Terry Eagleton:

“[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”

That kind of explains everything, doesn't it?

2009-07-22T15:06:00.001-07:00

I ran across an article from last year in the New York Times in which Richard Dawkins derides children's stories that include elements of fantasy or myth:

Richard Dawkins has said that he is now writing a book for children. In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4, Dr. Dawkins said he was working on a book that would explore children’s relationships with fairy tales, and encourage them to think about the world scientifically rather than mythologically. “I would like to know whether there’s any evidence that bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards and magic wands and things turning into other things — it is unscientific, I think it’s anti-scientific."

I guess if you don't see the value of myth for adults, then it is not surprising that you wouldn't see the value of myth for children either.

The "Everyone knows" argument, redux.

2009-07-21T08:17:00.000-07:00

I recently commented on some of what atheist blogger Sean Carroll has written about religion, noting that his concept of religion is narrow and mostly defined by Christian orthodoxy. Apparently I am not the only one who called him on this, because last week he wrote another blog entry in which, once again, he attempted to justify his definition of religion. Here is what he wrote:

When I use words like “God” or “religion,” I try to use them in senses that are consistent with how they have been understood (at least in the Western world) through history, by the large majority of contemporary believers, and according to definitions as you would encounter them in a dictionary. It seems clear to me that, by those standards, religious belief typically involves various claims about things that happen in the world — for example, the virgin birth or ultimate resurrection of Jesus. Those claims can be judged by science, and are found wanting.

What I find interesting is that the two examples that he cites--the virgin birth and the "ultimate" resurrection (by which I assume he means a "literal" or "physical" resurrection) of Jesus--both come from Christian orthodoxy. He thus betrays that what is "clear" to him about religion in general is essentially based on one specific class of religious belief, one that he is apparently the most familiar with--and which he then uses to base a generalization about all of religious faith or all conceptions of God. Carroll claims that a basic reference work definition of God or religion matches his own conception, namely one that necessarily involves claims about what happens in the world; it might do Carroll some good to read the Wikipedia article on "Conceptions of God" and then come back and write a blog entry once he has informed himself a bit more on the vast variety of conceptions that fall under that subject. For a scientist, he is remarkably good at throwing around a lot of unsubstantiated pronouncements about what "God" and "religion" supposedly mean to everyone. He goes on to say, for example, that

Most Christians would disagree with the claim that Jesus came about because Joseph and Mary had sex and his sperm fertilized her ovum and things proceeded conventionally from there, or that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead...

Once again, we see here the "most Christians" argument. If "most" Christians believe something, so the argument goes, then the minority don't get to be included in the definition of Christianity. (And by extension, if most Christians believe in a theistic God, then a theistic and interventionist God is a necessary part of the definition of "religion". ) Since I doubt that he has actually done an opinion poll of what "most" Christians believe, this is just an imprecise assertion that masquerades as an argument. He might actually be surprised at just how many Christians don't believe in the virgin birth. Then again, there is always the possibility of the circular reasoning that says that if they don't believe that, then they aren't even Christians in the first place.

The real question is why any of this matters, and Carroll himself asks this question:

Furthermore, if a religious person really did believe that nothing ever happened in the world that couldn’t be perfectly well explained by ordinary non-religious means, I would think they would expend their argument-energy engaging with the many millions of people who believe that the virgin birth and the resurrection and the promise of an eternal afterlife and the efficacy of intercessory prayer are all actually literally true, rather than with a handful of atheist bloggers with whom they agree about everything that happens in the world.

I really think that Carroll should read a book by John Shelby Spong some time. Many people of faith who reject supernatural theism or an interventionist deity do expend a lot of energy arguing with religious orthodoxy. But it is not a matter of either-or here; if there are more than two sides to an issue, then I will freely argue with both positions that I disagree with. I think the problem here is that I for one feel caught in the middle between Christian orthodoxy and atheism, and it annoys me. Christian orthodoxy annoys me for the obvious reasons, but militant atheism also annoys me because it often shares the same exact assumptions about what religion is or should be that the orthodoxy does. I find myself standing on the sidelines in the arguments between these groups of people, and the problem is that they are both wrong. Sometimes in life, there are more than two sides to an argument, but when an argument is carried out as if certain points of view don't even exist, when those points of view are thus shut out of the debate, one effectively cheats the rest of us out of a chance to really examine the issue from all sides. The reality is that lots of people with a spiritual inclination but who reject supernatural interventionism end up thinking that this is what religion is and join the "church alumni society", when, in reality, that isn't their only option. Not to mention the fact that it ends up being presumptuous and insulting; when someone claims that "everyone knows" what religion or God really is, based on a faulty assumption, what results is a definition that presumes to deny the reality of my own religious belief.

To Sean Carroll I say--sorry, but my religious belief is religious, even if it doesn't fit into your compartmentalized view of things. And that is why I argue with you.